


Out of this World

by Orinoco_II



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Action, Action/Adventure, Gen, Team Bonding, sex drugs and torchwood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-26
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-05-28 21:22:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 30,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15058064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orinoco_II/pseuds/Orinoco_II
Summary: Torchwood don't normally do drugs busts but this new stuff circulating the Cardiff streets didn't originate on Earth. And it's got some pretty lethal side-effects...





	1. Chapter 1

Danny Myers stood shirtless in front of his bathroom mirror. He grinned at his reflection as he combed gel into his blonde hair. He liked what he saw - the smooth curves of his biceps and the beginnings of a six pack; irrefutable proof that, whatever Digger said, his thirty pound a month gym membership was worth it. And what would Digger know anyway, with his flabby, unshagged body? Danny ran his fingers through his hair, pulling it into tufts and spikes; standing up here, flat there, ruffled here. He tugged at one last strand and carefully positioned it. Yeah - he was looking good and tonight was going to be an awesome night.

He grabbed his deodorant off the shelf and sprayed a liberal cloud around himself. The shirt he’d picked out — super suave — was hanging from the back of the bathroom door. He swung it on and buttoned it, leaving just enough jutting collarbone on show to give the ladies a hint of what was hidden underneath. The shirt hung perfectly over his pale, designer-ripped jeans. He gave his reflection one last appreciative look and left the bathroom.

Danny picked his phone up off the hall table. It was 9pm. The clubs would be starting to fill up by the time he got there. This was definitely going to be a big night. He pushed his feet into his new shoes (no trainers at the posh places) and shrugged on his jacket. His hand went to the inside pocket — the gear was all in place. This new stuff was going to get him minted and, once word got out, he’d have some serious currency on the street. No more small time for him. Danny took one last look at himself in the hall mirror, smirked, flipped up his jacket collar and slammed the flat door shut behind him.

-*-

Jack Harkness sat at his desk, cheek resting on one hand whilst he prodded half-heartedly at his keyboard with the other. He hated writing these annual reports for the Treasury. This one had been due four months ago and he’d been getting terse reminders from some ministry underling for several weeks. Now Ianto had started nagging him about it too, worried that the government would cut off Torchwood’s funding in an effort to get the Captain to do his homework. Jack wondered what he’d have to do to get Ianto to write it for him. He sighed, took his tongue out of his cheek and deleted the last sentence he’d written.

Ianto, who had been pottering quietly around the Hub since Gwen left an hour ago, poked his head into Jack’s office. “I’m off now,” he said.

Jack looked at his watch. It was 9pm. “Already?”

Ianto’s eyebrow flickered upwards at the absurdity. “I’m going out with Gwen tonight,” he said. “Unless you need me here..?” There was something hopeful in his tone.

Jack smiled. “No.” He leant back in his chair and flexed his fingers. “Go on. Rift’s quiet.”

“Damn Rift,” Ianto muttered. He stepped fully into the office and shoved his hands into his pockets, frowning at the floor.

Jack linked his hands behind his head. “If you don’t want to go, why don’t you just tell Gwen?”

Ianto snorted. “Yeah. Ok. Come back to me when you manage to say no to Gwen.”

“Good point,” Jack conceded. When Gwen got an idea in her head — whether it be a missing child, rehabilitating a murderous alien or a team bonding night — it was generally difficult to do anything but be swept along with her.

Ianto sighed heavily as he bent down to kiss Jack goodbye. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Have fun.”

Ianto gave Jack a look which suggested he felt the evening would be anything but and left. The cog door rolled shut behind him with a clang that echoed round the empty space. Jack had never really felt alone in the Hub before, but these last few months it had felt far too big for even his ghosts to fill it. He stretched his arms above his head, as far as they would go, pulling his muscles so taut that they quivered, and then relaxed with another deep sigh. He grabbed the edge of his desk, wheeled his chair back into it and started to type again.

-*-

Tino Martin sunk back into the ratty sofa and watched Paul and Sammy carefully weighing out the coke on the electronic scales. The scales had been their first investment — worth the money to make sure they didn’t get cheated. That’s what Paul had said and Paul was nineteen and had been to a posh school on the other side of the city. Tino’s eyes drifted up to watch the moth that was stubbornly hurling itself at the bare bulb that hung from the ceiling. The bulb’s weak light left deep shadows in the corners of the dusty basement. Apart from the sofa, an old trestle table with a dodgy leg on which the scales stood and a dented filing cabinet to which none of them had the key, the room was empty.

“I’m telling you man,” Sammy was saying. “We need to expand our customer base.” Sammy was only seventeen, but he was all muscles and confidence. He used phrases like ‘customer base’ and talked back to Paul when Tino never dared.

“And how the fuck do you plan on doing that?” Paul asked.

“My brother knows some dealers,” Sammy said. “They could cut us in. We ain’t selling shit.”

“It’ll pick up,” Paul assured him.

“This is good shit and we just got it stacked up here.”

“I said it’ll pick up,” Paul repeated, in his patronising I-know-best tone, that rubbed Sammy up the wrong way and Tino shrugged off.

Sammy bristled and was about to square up to Paul when they heard quick footsteps crossing the floorboards above their head. They tensed. The house had been empty for months. The basement door creaked open and a pair of Nike high-tops descended the rotting wooden stairs. They relaxed. Adil slouched into the light.

“I dropped the gear off with Danny,” Adil told them. “He’s taking it to Neo.”

“So where’s the cash?” Paul asked.

Adil pulled a bundle of crumpled notes from his jacket and handed it over. He sunk down on the sofa beside Tino and watched as Paul began to count them out. No one really knew how Adil had got in the gang. Paul had just brought him along one week. There were rumours he’d been thrown out of his last gang but they weren’t confirmed. They let him stay because he was older and had connections outside of the Towers and the petty dealing imbeciles that Tino and Sammy had grown up with.

“It’s short,” Paul announced, eventually.

“No, it’s not.”

“Yeah, it is,” Paul said, his thin features drawing in even thinner. “We agreed on five hundred.”

Adil shrugged. “He only paid up four hundred.”

“He’s fucking skimming off the top,” said Sammy, folding his arms and standing over Adil. They’d never got on.

“Fuck off Sammy,” Adil snapped. Tino held his breath. Sammy might throw a punch but he’d soon blow over. Paul, on the other hand — Tino had seen Paul flip out before and it wasn’t pretty.

“You trying to cheat us?” Paul said, elbowing Sammy to one side and leaning over Adil. “Where’s the rest?”

“That’s all I got,” Adil told him, folding his arms and staring back. “He’s giving me the other hundred when he’s sold it.”

“That’s not what we agreed,” Paul snarled.

“Well I don’t see any of the rest of you getting off your arses and selling nothing,” Adil pointed out.

“That’s not what we agreed,” Paul repeated. Tino barely saw Paul’s hands move but suddenly there was a knife, glinting in the dim light. It had one of those trashy fake-pearl handles but the blade looked real enough.

“What the fuck Paul?” Tino said, finally finding his voice.

“Nobody burns me,” Paul declared. The slang always sounded weird in his posh barely-Welsh accent.

“I’m not _burning_ you,” Adil repeated Paul’s words back to him in a mocking tone that Tino wouldn’t have tried if a guy was pointing a knife at him.

“I’ll fucking kill you!” Paul yelled, thrusting the knife closer to Adil’s chin. His face had turned that shade of red that only angry white men go and a vein had appeared on his forehead, running like a thick rope under his skin.

Adil reached out and shoved Paul in the centre of the chest. Paul stumbled backwards across the room. “Oh, grow up Paul,” Adil laughed, standing quickly. He pulled a gun out from under his jacket. “Welcome to big boy school.”

Tino stared at the gun. He’d never seen a real gun before. He’d heard stories - rumours and bragging from the other kids in the Towers - but he’d never actually seen one.

“Guys…” Sammy’s voice was uncertain. In all their years of friendship, Tino had never seen Sammy uncertain.

“Stay out of it Sammy,” Adil warned.

“Is this the way you want to play it?” Paul asked. He was breathing heavily, his eyes wild. He‘d probably smoked something on his way over tonight.

“Yeah.” Adil turned to look at Tino and Sammy. “Are you guys with me or with him?”

“Do we have to pick?” Tino asked. His voice sounded pathetic and childish.

“Yes!” Paul shouted. Tino saw the switch flip behind Paul’s eyes and he rushed towards Adil, holding the knife out in front of him like a sword. Adil calmly shot him in the stomach. The gunshot pulsed in the confined space and brought down a shower of dust from the ceiling above Tino’s head. Paul’s eyes went wide and then he crumpled to the floor, in a cartoonish imitation of a crushed paper cup. The knife clattered out of his hand.

There was blood everywhere. Tino had never seen so much blood. It was sprayed up the wall and splattered over the dented filing cabinet. Sammy had specks flecked across his white t-shirt. Tino stood up, his heart racing. His wanted to try and help Paul but he couldn’t move his feet. Paul was taking gurgling breaths, blood bubbling from his mouth with each one, and clutching with helpless hands at the mangled mess of his stomach. Tino, Sammy and Adil stood in silence and watched as Paul’s eyes glassed over and the gurgling finally petered out.

“Oh my God,” Tino said, closing his eyes. “What did you do that for?”

“Alright,” Adil ordered, putting the gun away. “We need to get this stuff and get out. Now.”

Tino and Sammy worked fast with shaking hands, gathering up the drugs and the scales. Adil stuffed the cash back into his jacket. They’d cleaned up and run enough times to know the drill but they’d never left a body behind before. Tino didn’t look back at Paul’s corpse as they ran for the door. They turned off the light, locked the basement door and dissipated into the night.


	2. Chapter 2

Gwen stepped out of the taxi and looked up the block of flats - a modern but functional build, with plenty of off-road parking and though they didn’t have a Bay-view, they were only a stone’s throw from the Taff and just opposite the park. It was, Gwen realised, exactly the sort of place she would have expected Ianto to live. She could just imagine all the suited young professionals setting off to work in the morning.

Ianto buzzed her in and was waiting at the top of the stairs, in jeans and a faded old polo shirt. He looked younger out of his suit — less like a stuffy middle-aged butler and more like the bloke in his mid-twenties that he actually was.

“Hi,” he greeted her with a smile. “You look good.”

Gwen looked down at her dress, bought last year and not yet worn, thanks to Torchwood. “Why, thank you.” She gave a twirl and Ianto laughed.

“I need your help,” Ianto told her over his shoulder as he disappeared into the flat. “You have to help me choose a shirt.”

“Ok.” Gwen followed him into the living room and stood in the middle of the room, clutching her impractically small handbag and taking in the sparse furniture and the large flatscreen TV that, if her own experience was anything to go by, she doubted Ianto had any time to watch. The walls were strangely bare, though there was a set of shelves along one wall, housing an impressive library of DVDs and books. It didn’t really feel like a home, Gwen thought sadly. There was none of the clutter and photographs and stupid sentimental souvenirs and, well, _mess_ that made her and Rhys’ flat feel like home. She wondered if Jack ever came here.

“Which one?” Ianto emerged from his bedroom and held up three shirts.

“How is it possible you once thought you were completely straight?” she asked teasingly.

Ianto gave her a look. She had once, on a long overnight stakeout, dragged the information out of him that Jack was the only man he’d been with, but other than that, they’d not really discussed his sexuality. “Which one?” he repeated pointedly, but his irritation was thankfully faked.

Gwen deliberated over the shirts. They were all stylish and would probably fit Ianto like they fitted the models in the shop in a way that would infuriate Rhys. She pointed to one with a thin blue stripe and button-up sleeves. “That one.”

“Thanks. I’ll just get changed and we can go.”

He shut the door and left Gwen in the living room. She wandered over to Ianto’s shelves and read a few spines, which confirmed Ianto’s taste in novels to be classics and cult, as she had expected. She got a brief image in her mind of a bookish, teenage Ianto, in a neat school uniform, lining the walls of his bedroom with Proust and Dickens, and smiled. She moved onto his CD collection and gave a yelping laugh of surprise.

“Ready to go?” Ianto asked, emerging from his bedroom.

Gwen waved a CD at him. “You have Kylie!”

Ianto jutted out his chin defiantly. “Yes.”

“I mean…” Gwen gestured to his CD rack. “You have _lots_ of Kylie.”

“I happen to think she’s a very talented musician,” Ianto said defensively, his ears turning pink. “Shall we go?”

“Yes.” Gwen put the CD back in the rack. “Maybe we can request some Kylie at the club, _especially for you_ ,” she suggested in a sing-song tone as she followed him out of the front door.

“Shut up.”

-*-

The queue hadn’t started to build up outside Neo yet. It had only opened two weeks ago and the sheep had flocked in at all hours the first weekend. By now, they’d realised it was no different to the other places, offering thumping music, cheap alcohol and a mass of writhing bodies to lose yourself in. It was a Thursday night so it wouldn’t be packed to its sweat-soaked capacity but Danny was more likely to find customers. The desperate bastards came crawling out on weeknights.

Danny dodged between two taxis and crossed the street, tugging at his collar and swaggering oh-so-casually — he was king of the fucking world tonight. The bouncers were busy bitching about some bloke called Nelson who always managed to get the shifts he wanted and didn’t look too hard at Danny, just lifted the rope and let him through. Danny used to get ID’d all the time before he started going to the gym.

He strode into the club and stood at the rail that ran around the dance floor. It was filling up but the dancing was still a little self-conscious. Solution simple - just add more alcohol. Danny smiled and trotted down the steps, weaving expertly through the clubbers to the bar.

-*-

As Gwen and Ianto approached the entrance to Neo, they could hear the music pulsing out through the doors. They edged forward in silence, queuing alongside girls shivering in outfits too revealing for an August night in Cardiff and blokes fuelled on testosterone and lager, sucking the last precious breaths out of their cigarettes. Gwen was sure that she and Ianto were the only people in the queue who hadn’t been pre-drinking. Looking at Ianto’s uncomfortable face, she wondered if she shouldn’t have suggested necking a few shots of vodka back at Ianto’s flat. She doubted that Ianto had any vodka. Maybe expensive whisky.

“Drink?” Ianto shouted over the music when they finally got inside.

“Thanks.” Gwen pointed across the dance floor. “I’ll get us a seat!”

Ianto gave her the thumbs up and threaded his way through the dancers to the bar. Gwen dove into the first available booth she found and flung her jacket on the opposite seat, daring anyone to try and force her out of it. She watched as Ianto squeezed his way through the crowds and leant over the bar to yell his order at the barmaid. He brought over two bottles of lager and slid in opposite her.

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

Gwen clinked the top of her bottle against his. “To friendship,” she proposed.

“To friendship,” Ianto agreed.

They took awkward sips. The loud music inserted itself between them. Gwen recognised the song from the radio but she couldn’t name it. “So,” she said, leaning forward to make herself heard over the top of it. “Anything new with you?”

Ianto blinked. “Uh, no. Not really.” He contemplated his beer bottle intently. “You?”

“Um, no, not really.”

“How’s Rhys?” Ianto asked.

“Oh, he’s, yeah, he’s good,” Gwen replied, nodding enthusiastically.

“Good.” Ianto mirrored her nods. “Good.”

They took another awkward sip. Ianto’s eyes roamed around the club before returning to studying the label on his bottle. Gwen wondered if this was a mistake — maybe they should have just gone for a quiet pint somewhere. This had seemed like such a brilliant idea when she’d suggested it — just her and Ianto, hanging out and being young, bonding over being mortal and in their own time. Ianto couldn’t look more out of place.

“We should dance,” Gwen suggested hopefully.

“Um, maybe not yet.” Ianto shifted in his seat and pointed to his beer. “Not really drunk yet.”

“Oh, come on,” Gwen coaxed with her most winning smile. “Or maybe we should have gone to that eighties club down the road?”

Whatever response Ianto was about to come back with was cut off by a loud squealing in Gwen’s left ear.

“Oh my God — Gwen!”

Gwen looked up to find Nerys standing beside their table. She was staggering on heels that Gwen would have toppled over in two steps out of her front door. Coming up behind Nerys and looking just as worse for wear were Sharine and Carla.

“Nerys!” Gwen braced herself. “Fancy seeing you guys here.”

“We have not seen you since your wedding,” Sharine declared loudly, leaning on the edge of the booth for support.

“No, well, I know,” Gwen apologised, with a little shrug. “I’ve been so busy.”

“God, we were so hammered that night,” Carla tittered.

Gwen had heard the stories countless times from all her friends and family, embarrassed that they had been so pissed they couldn’t remember a single thing about the wedding. Her Mam had been mortified and sworn Gwen to secrecy. Ianto had done a good job with the photos though.

“And who’s this?” Nerys asked, pointing at Ianto, who looked, quite frankly, terrified.

“Oh, this is my friend Ianto,” Gwen introduced them. “Ianto, this is Nerys, Sharine and Carla.”

“Hello,” Ianto replied uneasily, with a small wave. He was met by a barrage of high-pitched and over-exuberant greetings. Gwen felt his discomfort across the table and cringed.

“Mind if we join you?” Sharine asked, already dumping her bag and on her way into the booth.

“Oh, um…” Gwen hesitated. She looked to Ianto who shrugged helplessly. “Yeah, ok.”

“Great,” Nerys said and made to sit down opposite.

Ianto leapt up and out and booth before he was trapped in it. “Can I get anyone a drink?” he offered.

He headed off to the bar with their orders and Nerys elbowed Gwen in the ribs. “So — what’s the deal with him?” she asked. “Where’d you dig him up from? Have you given Rhys the boot already?”

Gwen rolled her eyes. “No, he’s just a friend,” she explained. “From work.”

“Oh,” said Sharine, suddenly intrigued, bobbing her head as she tried to follow Ianto with her eyes through the tangle of legs and arms and bodies on the dance floor. “Is he single?”

“Um.” Gwen wasn’t quite sure how to answer that. ‘He’s having a lot of sex with our boss, who I think he’s almost definitely in love with, but I’m not 100% sure it's exclusive’, were her first thoughts. “Not really,” she plumped for, uncertainly.

“Not really?” Sharine queried, predictably picking up on the uncertainty in Gwen’s answer.

“It’s a bit complicated,” Gwen expanded tactfully.

“Oh, really,” Sharine grinned naughtily, as though had Gwen told her that Ianto was completely free and unattached. Gwen should have known — Sharine was a moth to the flame of guys with complicated love lives. Which was why she so often ended up pissed and weeping down the phone to her friends at 2am. When Ianto returned with the drinks and perched himself awkwardly on the end of the bench next to her, Sharine turned to him with a flirtatious smile, tapping the straw in her vodka and coke suggestively against her teeth. Ianto smiled nervously back and Gwen closed her eyes in despair.

-*-

Even before Gwen’s friends had turned up, Ianto had realised that this was a bad idea. He hadn’t been out clubbing since he’d moved back from London and he was remembering why. The times he had been out in London he’d either been off his face before he arrived at the club or dragged there by Lisa and he’d have gone anywhere with Lisa if she’d asked. He wasn’t really sure that he and Gwen would have had anything more to say to each other even if they hadn’t had to shout over monotonous and completely unrecognisable music.

The table was covered in empty glasses and bottles. In a little over an hour, Gwen and her friends had seen Ianto’s three beers and doubled it. Nerys and Carla were falling about in hysterics — something to do with the stripper from Gwen’s hen do — their shrill peals of laughter more grating to Ianto’s eardrums than the relentless pounding bassline. Gwen had switched from beer to vodka and was joining in with the anecdotes. Sharine had put her hand on Ianto’s thigh so many times he was wondering when the appropriate moment would be to politely mention his boyfriend. He sighed, removed her hand again and stood up.

“Just going to the toilet,” he said, though no one either heard or responded.

Ianto made his way across the club, pushing his way through the gathering crowds. He nearly collided with a young, blonde guy on his way out of the toilets. The guy didn’t bother to apologise but, then again, he looked like one of those poser types — all muscles and popped collars. Ianto stood at the urinals listening to the muffled beats vibrating the tiled walls. As he finished up and went to wash his hands, a man stumbled out of the cubicles.

He swayed in the middle of the room and met Ianto’s eyes with blown pupils and bloodshot whites. Arms windmilling wildly, he reached out for anything to grab hold of, before collapsing onto the floor. His body snapped taught for a few seconds and then began to twitch and jerk. His eyes rolled back in his head, his breath coming in rasping pants.

“Shit.” Ianto knelt down beside the man and tried to cushion his head. “What have you taken?” he asked, getting his phone out and dialling. “Ambulance please.” The man’s thinning hair was plastered to his scalp with sweat. “What have you taken?” Ianto asked again insistently as he waited to be connected.

There was no response. The man was starting to choke, his skin stretched thin and bright red over his angular features. Foamy saliva, flecked with blood, dribbled from his blue-tinged lips. He legs pedalled frantically against the grimy floor tiles. Ianto described the scene to the operator who assured him an ambulance was on its way. The door opened behind him. Another clubber stood frozen and wide-eyed in the doorway, staring at the man writhing about on the floor.

“Tell a member of staff,” Ianto instructed him. “I’ve called an ambulance.”

He nodded dumbly and bolted back out of the door. The convulsions were slowing now. One huge spasm shuddered down the man's torso and his spine arched painfully. His stuttering, intermittent grunts decrescendoed as his eyes fluttered shut and the redness began to seep away from his face. After a few more twitches, he lay still. Even as he put the anonymous stranger into the recovery position and started mouth-to-mouth, Ianto knew it was too late.


	3. Chapter 3

Jack had given up on his report after an hour, his brain having switched off when he reached Subsection 3C: ‘Budget Priorities for the Next Financial Year’. He just needed a quick break, he told himself, and then he’d get right back to it. He stood in the centre of the Hub with his hands in his pockets and tipped his head back, staring at the water tower reaching up above him and disappearing into the cavernous ceiling. Myfanwy was perched up in her eyrie, shuffling agitatedly from foot to foot. Jack wondered if she was getting broody again. If so, they’d be drawing straws for who went up there with the fake egg this time.

He was considering investigating the coffee machine and going back to his report, when one of the workstations bleeped loudly. Jack joyfully bounded across to check the screen. A red spot pulsed insistently over a street in the centre of town. Jack zoomed in on the location and hit the command button. A location ID popped up beside the red dot: CLUB NEO. He frowned as he fitted his Bluetooth into his ear.

-*-

Ianto stood beside Neo’s manager as the paramedics carried the body out on a stretcher. She was chewing the skin down the side of her thumbnail, wavering between shock and panic about what the hell her senior managers were going to say about a death on the premises two weeks after opening. Ianto was saved from making awkward consolatory conversation by his phone ringing.

“Where are you?” Jack asked as soon as Ianto picked up.

Ianto frowned in puzzlement. Jack was normally capable of retaining information not immediately concerning him for at least a few hours. “Out with Gwen,” Ianto reminded him. “Like I said.”

“Where?” Jack asked. Ianto could hear the unmistakable sound of Jack’s boots clanging urgently around the Hub as he spoke.

“Neo,” Ianto told him, walking a few paces away from the manager and lowering his voice. “In town. Why?”

“Looks like you just got your wish,” Jack told him. “There’s been a Rift spike. I’m on my way over.”

Jack hung up before Ianto could get any further information out of him. Putting his phone back in his pocket, he realised it was going to be a work night after all. Ianto had been right to stop himself at three beers, just in case. One of the paramedics was asking the manager to fill out a form on a clipboard and she looked like she was about to go into meltdown, gnawing on the end of her pen and shuffling her feet anxiously. Down the corridor, Gwen came flying out of the ladies and spotted Ianto. She scurried towards him, ricocheting off the walls a couple of times as she did so.

“There you are,” she announced, louder than was necessary. “Where’ve you been?”

“Guy OD’d and died in the toilets,” Ianto told her, thumbing towards the manager and paramedic.

Gwen’s eyes went comically wide. “Shit.”

“Yes,” Ianto agreed flatly, nodding and wrinkling his nose at Gwen’s breath. “And there’s been a Rift spike so Jack’s on his way.”

“What’s happened?” Gwen half-hiccupped.

Ianto shrugged, moving out of the way of a gaggle of drunken women bundling out of the toilets and back towards the dance floor. “He didn’t say.” Ianto pushed his hands into his pockets and leant back against the wall of the corridor. “You noticed anything?”

“No, nothing,” Gwen stage-whispered in a gossipy tone, her eyes still wide. Then she blinked as a realisation hit her. “I’m a little bit drunk.” She propped herself clumsily against the wall beside Ianto.

“I hadn’t noticed.” Ianto twisted his torso slightly to meet her eye with a small smile. “Go back to your friends. I’ll wait for Jack.”

Gwen trotted back off into the club and Ianto headed for the door. He stood outside on the street, arms folded tightly around his chest. It was cold for August. The roped-off group of smokers were all watching the paramedics load the corpse into the back of the ambulance, speculating wildly as to what had happened. Their smoke drifted across on the breeze and curled into Ianto’s nostrils. He breathed in deeply and enviously — it seemed somehow unfitting not to be accompanying the poor-quality lager with a cigarette. He was seriously considering bumming one off someone when the SUV came squealing round the corner, mounted the pavement with two wheels and slammed to a stop. Jack hopped out, all flapping coat and hair and steely jaw, and strode round to meet Ianto.

“What happened?” Ianto asked.

“The monitor picked up a Rift surge here,” Jack told him, checking his wristband. “Not a spike, more like a sudden burst of energy.” He walked past Ianto and into the club, eyes glued to his wrist. The bouncers glanced at Jack and the SUV briefly, but were too busy complaining about some bloke called Nelson missing all this bollocks to bother challenging him. It had gone 11 now and the queue had disappeared.

“Caused by what?” Ianto asked as he trailed after Jack into the club. “We haven’t seen anything.”

“I’m not sure.” Jack marched off down the corridor. “It’s this way.” He led the way into the men’s toilets.

“But I was in here.” Ianto followed him through the door. It was strange how a nightclub toilet could acquire that distinctive stale piss and beer smell after only a couple of weeks. “There was… A guy OD’d.” Ianto stared at the dirty floor where he had been kneeling and cushioning a stranger’s head less than half an hour ago. There was a line of men at the urinals and the sinks, going about their business, as though nothing had happened. “He died.”

“OD’d on what?” Jack asked, tapping some buttons on his wristband.

“I don’t know.” Ianto was conscious of the attention they were drawing from the other men in the toilets. “He was fitting. Couldn’t tell me what he’d taken.” Ianto followed Jack down the line of cubicles. “I thought it was just coke or something. You think it caused the Rift surge?”

“Seems too much of coincidence.” Jack swept round to face Ianto suddenly. “Where’s the body?”

“The ambulance took him.”

“We’re gonna need the body back,” Jack stated matter-of-factly.

Ianto pushed open the door to one of the cubicles. “He was in here.” He wiped his index finger across the top of the toilet tank and examined it. There were minute traces of white powder on his fingertip. “Might want to test this,” Ianto suggested, waving his finger in Jack’s direction.

Jack peered at Ianto’s fingertip. “Yeah. Be careful with that stuff.” He took a step back and paused, looking Ianto up and down appreciatively. “Hey - you look good.”

Ianto blinked, momentarily caught off guard by the surprisingly genuine compliment. He looked down at himself self-consciously. “Uh, thanks.”

“Where’s Gwen?” Jack asked, already moving onto other things.

“Inside.” Ianto jerked his head in the direction of the rumbling music. “We bumped into some of her friends.”

“Right.” Jack headed for the door. “You take some samples from here and get them back to the Hub. I’ll take Gwen and get the body.”

“Ok,” Ianto agreed, looking around for ways to seal off the cubicle. “Oh, Jack?”

Jack turned round, half out the door and leaning on the frame. “Yeah?”

“Gwen’s a little…pissed.”

“Right. Gotcha.” Jack grinned in a manner that suggested he found that an intriguing prospect and the door swung shut behind him. Ianto grabbed a wet floor sign from the cleaning booth and erected it in front of the cubicle, before heading out to the SUV to collect the clean-up kit.

-*-

Jack didn’t much care for the music playing in the club. Contrary to what his teammates believed, his taste in music was a little broader than Glen Miller (and there had been a time, more years ago than he cared to count, when he’d never even heard of the 1940s band leader), but he did at least like music to have a recognisable tune to hum along with. The dance floor was half full and pungent with the stench of sweat and hormones and spilt drinks. Jack spotted Gwen in a booth with her friends and pushed his way through the clubbers towards them.

“Gwen,” he said, coming to a halt at the end of their table. Gwen looked up at him with an unfocused squint. “Sorry to break up the party, but we gotta go to work.”

“I might have guessed.” Gwen stared forlornly down into her drink.

“Oh my God.” Jack looked down and saw one of Gwen’s friends staring up at him, her mouth framed around a perfect, puckered O. “Another one.” She blinked at him dreamily.

“Where do you get these guys Gwen?” another of the friends asked, an unsubtle elbow jabbing Gwen in the ribs.

“He’s my boss,” Gwen told them, as she gathered up her handbag and squeezed out of the booth. She skittered out into the open on unstable legs and Jack grabbed her arm to steady her. Gwen coughed guiltily and regained her composure, brushing Jack’s hand off and stalking away from him.

“Ladies.” Jack couldn’t resist. He flashed his best heartbreaker smile and winked at her friends. “A pleasure.”

He caught up with a swaying Gwen and grabbed her elbow to steer her across the club. As they entered the corridor, Ianto emerged from the toilets with a neatly sealed Tupperware.

“Did a scan.” Ianto snapped off a pair of latex gloves. “I’ve got it all.” He deposited the gloves into another Tupperware container.

“Great,” Jack said. “You get that back to the Hub and start analysing it. We’ll go get that body back.”

Outside the club, Gwen and Jack climbed into the SUV whilst Ianto hailed himself and his Tupperware a taxi. Jack considered making a crack about Gwen being over the limit, but since she looked like she might be about to throw up on the dashboard he kept his mouth shut, gunning the engine and speeding off in the direction of the hospital. He only jumped two red lights and cut up one motorbike at a mini roundabout on their way and, thanks to his creative interpretation of traffic laws, they arrived at the hospital just in time to see the paramedics from the club unloading the body. Jack pulled up opposite the ambulance bays, cut the engine and turned off the lights. They lent forward and peered out through the windscreen.

“Wave the credentials or try and snatch it?” Jack queried.

Gwen watched as one of the paramedics wandered a few paces away and lit a cigarette. “Snatch it,” she decided, opening the door. “I’ll distract the guard.”

Jack grinned. They should get Gwen drunk more often. He quietly stepped out of the SUV and watched Gwen saunter over to the other paramedic, who was struggling with the gurney.

“Hi there,” Gwen greeted him. “I, uh, think I’ve got something in my eye - could you take a look?”

The paramedic glanced over irritably at his colleague, who was now talking on his mobile. “Ok,” he agreed.

“We should go into the light,” Gwen suggested, leading the paramedic away from the ambulance and underneath one of the floodlights.

“Head back,” he instructed. “Which eye?”

“Left.” Gwen tilted her head back and the paramedic pulled back her eyelid with his thumb, inspecting her eye closely. Keeping half an eye on them and half an eye on the smoking paramedic, Jack slipped across the tarmac and around the back of the ambulance. He inched along the side of the vehicle.

“I can’t see anything,” the paramedic was telling Gwen. “What was it you think you got in there?”

“Um — a fly,” Gwen replied.

“A fly?” he queried.

“Yes,” Gwen confirmed. “A fly.”

Jack reached out from behind the ambulance with his right hand and tugged the gurney towards him. It rolled mercifully silently up the curb. Jack gripped it with both hands and started to drag it back round the ambulance. As it picked up pace, the wheels began to squeak. He reigned it in and slowed down. The paramedic was shining a torch into Gwen’s eye now.

“I can’t see anything,” he told her.

“Are you sure?” Gwen asked. Jack had made it across the road and positioned the gurney at the back of the SUV.

“Yes,” the paramedic said. “Maybe it flew out again?”

“It feels like there’s something in there,” Gwen said.

“There’s nothing in there,” the paramedic repeated. “And your breath smells of vodka.” He stepped away from Gwen and tucked his torch back into his pocket. The body bag was snagging on something as Jack tried to slide it off the gurney and into the boot of the SUV. Gwen looked round, clocked his struggle and spun quickly round to face the paramedic again.

“You know,” Gwen said flirtatiously. “You fill that uniform very nicely.” Out of the corner of his eye, Jack could see her stroking the paramedic’s bicep. Jack smirked to himself, strangely proud — Gwen had learnt well at the Jack Harkness School of Distracting the Guard. The paramedic, on the other hand, appeared unimpressed.

“I’m married,” he told her flatly.

Gwen waved her left hand. “Me too!”

“Then I think you should go home to your husband and sober up,” the paramedic suggested. “I have work to do.”

Jack finally freed the body bag and it shot forward into the back of the SUV. He pushed the gurney away with his foot and shut the boot. Gwen looked across and he signalled with his head.

“Oh well,” Gwen said. “Can’t blame a girl for trying.” She gave him one of her patented Gwen Cooper believe-my-bullshit smiles and hurried over to the SUV. The paramedic turned back to the ambulance and realised that the gurney was missing. He whipped round and saw it, abandoned behind the SUV. Jack already had the engine running as Gwen jumped in.

“Hey!” the paramedic shouted, running towards them. Jack swung the car round and roared off away from the hospital. He could see the paramedic sprinting after them in the rear view mirror. As the SUV pulled away from him, he slowed and stopped, standing with his hands on his hips and watching them drive away. Gwen and Jack looked at each other and grinned.

-*-

Ianto popped his head up from behind his workstation as Gwen and Jack wheeled the body bag across the Hub on the trolley that Ianto kept handy by the garage door. He was feeling more like himself after a coffee and a change into one of the new three-piece suits he’d treated himself to last month (because there’d been Daleks and the world hadn’t ended, which seemed like a good enough reason to celebrate with new tailoring). He turned off the Bunsen burner and pulled down his facemask.

“A successful mission, I see?” he observed.

“Gwen flirted shamelessly with a paramedic,” Jack told him.

“All in the line of duty,” Gwen claimed, hiccupping.

Jack met Ianto’s eye and grinned. Ianto smirked back at him. Gwen glared at them both and hiccupped again. Ianto peeled off his gloves, took off his safety goggles and untied the facemask.

“I finished the analysis on the powder,” he told them as he took over from Gwen in helping Jack manoeuvre the body.

“And?” Jack asked.

“It’s alien,” Ianto replied, as they hooked the body bag up to the winch and began to lower it onto the autopsy table.

“No offence,” Jack said. “But I could have told you that.”

“It has similar properties to cocaine,” Ianto explained. They unhooked the body bag and settled it onto the table. “But it’s not quite the same.”

Jack unzipped the body bag to reveal the man’s ashen features. “I suppose our friend here might be able to give us some more answers,” Jack said, prodding the corpse irreverently. Gwen hiccupped again, loudly. “But I guess we can finish up here in the morning,” he added, looking up at Gwen with raised eyebrows. Gwen looked at Ianto and caught his amused expression. She hiccupped again, then looked down at the floor shiftily.

“Perhaps you could give this drunken reprobate a lift home Ianto?” Jack suggested, taking the SUV keys out of his pocket and throwing them up to Ianto.

“Yes sir,” Ianto agreed as he caught them.

He dangled the keys in front of Gwen, who hiccupped again and clapped a hand over her mouth in frustration. Ianto shook his head in mock disappointment. Jack laughed as he zipped the body bag back up. As Ianto shepherded Gwen out of the Hub, he glanced back over his shoulder to see Jack wandering hands-in-pockets up to his office. The cog door rolled shut behind them and they stepped into the lift side by side.


	4. Chapter 4

Gwen managed to get her head through the right hole in her top on the third attempt. She hopped out into the living room whilst trying to put a sock on her left foot. Rhys was sitting on the sofa in his boxers and t-shirt, leisurely eating toast and watching the breakfast news. Gwen tried to work out what was going on as she leant on the end of the sofa to put on her right sock. On the screen, a female reporter, who looked as if her face had been sprayed into place right along with her hair, was standing outside a terraced house, police tape flapping in the breeze behind her.

“19-year-old Paul Hughes was found in the early hours of the morning in the basement of this abandoned property in Penylan,” she announced. “No official statements have been issued yet, but it is believed he was shot.”

Gwen tilted her head and flicked her hair back out of her eyes with a toss of her head. The banner across the bottom of the screen declared ‘NAW LEADER’S SON SHOT IN DRUGS ROW’ in unsympathetic block capitals. The reporter continued to speak over a clip of Alistair Hughes getting out of a black car, flashbulbs pinging all around him as he held his hand up hopelessly to the camera.

“Paul is, of course, the youngest son of Welsh First Minister Alistair Hughes,” the reporter continued, as Gwen half listened while hunting for her boots behind the armchair. “Mr Hughes has declined to comment on his son’s supposed involvement with a local drugs gang.”

“Bloody typical, these silver spooners,” Rhys said, spraying a mouthful of crumbs. “Daddy gave him a bit too much allowance and he spent it all on cocaine. Now he’s dead.”

Gwen wrestled on one boot. “It’s a bit tragic really.”

“Alistair’s refused to comment of course,” Rhys continued, wafting his toast as though the fact were a personal affront to him.

Gwen pulled on the other boot and lifted up the stack of post beside the television. “Poor bloke,” she said distractedly, moving the TV guide and a pile of unread local papers off the coffee table.

“I don’t see why.” Rhys swallowed quickly so he could make his point. “Just because his son’s been shot, now we’re not supposed to care about the council tax rises?”

Gwen was now on her knees, feeling around under the armchair. “Have you seen my keys?”

Rhys finally tore himself away from the news. “Bit pissed last night, were we?” he asked with a smug smile.

“No,” Gwen denied, glaring at him.

“You fell over the sofa on your way in,” Rhys pointed out.

“Oh.” Gwen stood up and blew her fringe out of her eyes. “I thought you were asleep.”

“I was,” Rhys informed her pointedly. She decided the least she could do was look contrite. Rhys shifted about on the sofa, pulled her keys out from between the cushions and held them out.

“Brilliant.” Gwen took them from him and planted a big kiss on his lips. “I’ll see you later.” She looked at her watch. “Oh God, I’m so late.”

-*-

“Sorry, I know I’m late!” Gwen called out as she burst into the Hub. She could hear the clinking of tools in the autopsy bay. She put her bag down on her desk and hung her jacket on the back of her chair. “Traffic was a nightmare and…” She gave up. “Oh bollocks, I overslept, alright?”

She went into the autopsy bay to find Jack in disposable gloves and a green plastic apron, up to his elbows in last night’s victim. Ianto was standing at the rail above, in an immaculate suit, observing him.

“Morning Gwen,” Ianto greeted her.

“Nice of you join us,” Jack added.

“Yeah, yeah,” Gwen muttered, as they laughed. Bloody morning people. Gwen didn’t know how they did it. Hadn't Ianto been drinking last night too?

“Coffee?” Ianto offered.

Gwen turned to him in relief. “Thought you’d never ask.”

Ianto disappeared and Gwen took his place at the rail. “So?” she asked. “What’s the verdict?”

“Well,” Jack began. “Toxicology confirms he overdosed on a stimulant but the drug in his veins is definitely alien and it’s in a fatally high concentration. Sped up his poor heart until it was overloaded and just couldn’t cope. Cause of death was a massive heart attack.”

Gwen blew out her cheeks. That was quite a way to go. “Do we know who he is?” she asked.

Ianto reappeared and handed her a coffee. “Julian Morris,” he reeled off. “Thirty-three. Construction worker, lived in Adamsdown. Divorced, no children, but he does have parents and siblings in the area. Colleagues and friends.” He waved a file about. Gwen wondered what the hell time he’d got in this morning to get that all typed up before 9am. “We might be able to find out if any of them know who he bought his drugs from?”

“Good call,” Jack said. He peeled off his gloves and threw them in the bin and began to untie his apron. “Gwen and I can go and call on some of them, see what they know.” He balled up the apron and it followed his gloves into the bin. “Ianto — if you wouldn’t mind dealing with him?”

Ianto trotted down the stairs, handing Jack the file as he passed him. Gwen followed Jack out into the main Hub. As he grabbed his coat, Gwen looked down at her coffee disappointedly — it was still too hot to drink. She sighed, put it down, grabbed her jacket and followed Jack out the door.

-*-

“So,” Jack asked, as he locked the SUV and they walked towards the block of flats. “Who are we visiting?”

“Mark Edwards,” Gwen read from the file. “According to Ianto’s records he was Julian’s best mate. They used to work together. Mark was made redundant though, six months ago.”

Jack pushed the buzzer for number twenty-six and took a step back, squinting up at the curtained windows above them. Gwen leant up against the wall with her arms crossed, looking back across the grassy slope that lead down to the road. The street was deserted; strange for the summer holidays but the kids were probably all inside on their games consoles. The sky was blanketed in off-white cloud and a cold breeze buffeted an empty crisp packet down the pavement. Jack buzzed again and a man’s voice came out of the speaker grill. “Yeah?”

“I’m looking for Mr Edwards,” Jack said.

The man hesitated. “That’s me,” he admitted.

“We’re with the police Mr Edwards,” Jack told him. “We’d like to ask a few questions about Julian Morris. Can we come in?”

There was another long pause, followed by an even lengthier sigh. “Ok.”

The door clicked and Jack wrenched it open, letting it swing back into Gwen as he rushed for the stairs. Gwen caught the door with both hands before it hit her in the face, rolled her eyes and set off after him, taking the stairs two at a time to keep up with Jack’s long stride. When they reached the third floor, Mark Edwards was standing in the doorway of his flat, fingers twisting nervously in the hem of his faded his t-shirt. His dark hair was cut close to his head, his eyes ringed with shadow and his face covered in patchy stubble. Jack flashed a fake ID and Mark started to back into his flat to let them in, staring up at Jack in terror.

He cleared his throat once they were standing inside. “Sorry about the mess,” he said, gesturing around. There were piles of shoes inside the front door and the living room floor was littered with child’s toys, nappies, clothes and bags of food shopping. A small boy of about two sat listlessly in the middle of the living room, wheeling a toy truck in a lethargic arc on the only clear patch of carpet. Mark grabbed him under the arms and deposited him in a playpen in the corner.

“My son, Finn,” Mark told them. He shrugged hopelessly. “Takes a bit of getting used to, being a house husband.”

“I can imagine,” Jack said blankly, with the air of a man who had no intention of even trying to imagine life as a house husband.

Gwen suddenly had to repress a giggle at the thought of Jack as hen-pecked husband, staying at home with the kids. She snapped back into professional mode before she lost it. “Take a seat Mr Edwards,” she said, gesturing to an armchair.

Mark moved a pile of washing and perched on the edge of the chair. His big toe was poking through the end of his stained, worn sports sock.

“I assume you’re aware what happened to Julian Morris last night?” Gwen asked him, sitting herself down on the sofa. Jack stayed standing, hands in pockets; jaw set.

Mark stared down at his hands twisting together in his lap and nodded.

“Were you out with Julian last night?” Gwen asked.

Mark nodded again. “Jules,” he mumbled, still staring down into his lap. “He liked to be called Jules.”

“Right.” Gwen leant forward, trying to make eye contact with Mark. He glanced up briefly, met her eye and flicked his eyes back down again. “We know that Jules took an overdose Mr Edwards,” she continued. “We’d like to know where he got the drugs from.”

“I don’t know,” Mark blurted.

“Are you sure?” Gwen pressed him. “Because these drugs aren’t ordinary drugs Mr Edwards. They’re very powerful — very dangerous. So if you know…”

“I don’t,” Mark said, a little surer now.

“Ok.” Gwen nodded, and decided to try from a different angle. She sat up a bit, moving out of his personal space. “Did Jules take a lot of drugs? Or was it a one-off last night?”

Mark blinked rapidly, several times in a row, and then rubbed his fists furiously into his eyes. “He — he dabbled,” he said eventually, scraping his fingers through his hair. “Weekend user, you know?”

“And what about you?” Gwen asked softly.

Mark’s fingers went slack in his hair and he slid his palms down over his forehead to cover his eyes, rigid elbows resting on his knees. He parted his hands and finally met Gwen’s eyes, his own glistening. He looked across at Finn, who had pulled himself to his feet in his playpen, fingers gripping the edge as he stared blankly at them all with big, round eyes, snot encrusted on his upper lip.

Mark looked back at Gwen. “It was me,” he croaked. “I got him hooked.”

“How?” Gwen queried, keeping her face impassive.

“I was short of money.” Mark rubbed at his eyes again, leaving them bloodshot and even puffier than before. “But I’ve jacked it in now, I swear,” he said desperately.

“You won’t be in any trouble, if you tell us where Jules got his drugs from,” Gwen assured him gently. “Was it a new supplier? Or someone he’d been using for a while?”

“It was a new guy.” Mark seemed to have the tears under control, but the same couldn’t be said for his right leg, which was jiggling up and down frantically. He’d moved onto staring out of the living room window. “I used to be his dealer, so it must have been a new guy.”

“And you really don’t know who?” Gwen asked.

“No,” Mark shook his head firmly, eyes now directed at the coffee table, piled high with paperwork and magazines and dirty plates and mugs.

Jack stepped across the room and stuck out his hand. “Thank you very much Mr Edwards,” Jack told him. “You’ve been very helpful. We’ll leave you in peace.” Mark looked up in surprise at having his hand firmly shaken by Jack.

“Yes, thank you,” Gwen added, standing up. She went over to the bare playpen and smiled at the little boy. Mark leapt out of his seat and hovered awkwardly behind her. The child stared up at her with sad blue eyes. Gwen looked over her shoulder at Mark who was blinking again. She gave the boy one last smile. “Bye Finn.” Then she offered Mark a smile. “We’ll see ourselves out.”

“You think he’s telling the truth?” Gwen asked Jack as the flat door shut behind them.

“I think he’s hiding something, but I don’t think he knows who sold Jules the drugs,” Jack said as he bounded down the stairs. “I think they had a spat last night, probably over money, and Jules got his kicks somewhere else. I don’t buy his story that he’s not dealing anymore.” He pushed open the door at the bottom of the stairs and marched towards the SUV. “Have you got any more friends on that list?” Jack asked.

Gwen flipped open the file. “Kevin Gilbert,” she read. “Mutual friend of Jules and Mark. Working on the John Lewis building in town.”

“Let’s pay him a visit.”

-*-

Mark peered from his kitchen window and watched as the shiny black Range Rover swung down from the curb and roared off up the road. It wasn’t a police car and they didn’t look like police officers. They must be Nutbeam’s guys, though he’d never sent a woman before, and certainly never sent anyone pretending to be police before. Whatever, it didn’t matter — Jules was dead and this was completely fucked up.

Mark let his forehead thump against the wall. “Shit.” He pounded the tiles with his fist. “Shit, shit, shit.” Maria was going to kill him.

He took a deep breath and decisively grabbed one of the kitchen knives from the wooden block on the surface. Picking his way across the living room, he hauled Finn out of his playpen and dumped him on the floor. She’d been standing right there — she had to have known. He ripped out the playpen’s foam lining and slashed it open with the knife. He threw the knife to one side and fetched Finn’s pushchair from the hallway, wrestling it erect and starting to stash the packets of white powder in the bottom of it.

“Fancy a walk little man?”

The kid just stared back, taunting him with that gormless expression, the one that elicited Maria’s snide comments about Finn getting his brains from his father. Mark could feel the sweat soaking down the back of his t-shirt. Finn found himself dumped unceremoniously into his pushchair and sat there uncomplainingly as Mark strapped him in and headed for the door.

-*-

“Kevin Gilbert?” Gwen enquired as she and Jack approached the group of builders, sitting on the back of a van in their high-vis with cardboard cups of tea.

A red-faced man with broad shoulders and hair retreating as fast as his beer gut was expanding answered. “Yeah?”

She flashed a fake ID. “Can we have a word?”

Kevin heaved himself to his feet and lumbered over. “Is this about Jules?” he asked.

“Yes,” Gwen told him.

“I already told those other cops,” Kevin said, waving his tea irritably. “I don’t know anything.” It was hard to tell, Gwen realised, where Kevin’s head ended and his neck began.

“Did you know that Jules was a drug user?” Jack asked.

“Of course.” Kevin looked at Jack as though he was an idiot. “Everyone knew he’d been using since his divorce.”

“Do you know where he got his drugs from last night?” Gwen asked.

Kevin shrugged and took a sip of tea. “Nope.”

“It wasn’t Mark Edwards,” Gwen told him.

Kevin shrugged again. “Then I definitely don’t know.”

“Were you out with them last night?” Jack asked.

“Yeah.”

“Did you see any transactions taking place?”

“No.” Kevin drained the end of his tea. “Like I told the other woman, I went to the bar to get a drink, when I came back, Jules had gone for a piss. Next thing I know, he’s OD’d.”

“Well, thank you,” Gwen told him, sensing they’d got all they could from Kevin Gilbert. “That’s helpful.”

Kevin gave another dismissive shrug, lobbed his empty cup in a nearby bin and went back to join his colleague.

“Seems like no one saw anything,” Jack lamented as they headed back to the SUV.

“So what next?” Gwen asked as she climbed into the passenger seat beside him.

“We’ll have to check through the CCTV from the club,” Jack suggested. “See if we spot anything.”

“When you say ‘we’..?” Gwen queried, her heart sinking. Trawling through CCTV footage had ranked just above paperwork as her most hated task when she was in the police. It wasn’t any more enjoyable now, even if you were trying to spot aliens instead of hooligans in the match day crowds.

Jack laughed, no fonder than Gwen was of staring at jerky images until his eyeballs dried out. Luckily, there was a man for whom the repetitive, attention-demanding task was perfectly suited. “Yeah, I mean Ianto,” he confirmed.

-*-

Mark pulled his hood further down over his forehead as he pushed Finn towards the block of flats. He opened the front door and rammed the pushchair awkwardly through the gap. There was red tape across the lift and a faded out of order sign hanging from yellowing tape in one corner. Mark turned around and started the drag the pushchair up the stairs. A young bloke in a leather jack was on his way down.

“Need a hand mate?” he asked.

“No, I’m fine,” Mark snapped.

Leather jacket shrugged, shook his head and trotted on down the stairs. Mark continued to bump Finn’s pushchair up the stairs at top speed. He reached the door to Number 15 and hammered on it loudly. After several long minutes, he heard shuffling from within and eventually Danny Myers swung the door open. He stood there, bleary-eyed, in boxers and a t-shirt, his normally styled hair unflatteringly flat.

“What the..?” Danny muttered.

Mark barged past him into the flat. He began to unload the pushchair’s cargo in the middle of the living room. “Take them back.” He flung all the packets out onto the carpet in an untidy heap. “I don’t fucking want them.”

“What the hell?” Danny asked, staring at him as though he’d gone mad.

“I don’t want your stuff anymore, ok?” Mark told him.

Danny blinked, finally waking up. He pushed up the sleeves of his t-shirt, showing off his bloody biceps again. “You’re not getting a refund,” he snapped.

“I don’t give a fuck.” Mark could hear his own breathing roaring in his ears. “Just take it back.”

He didn’t even look back as he pushed the pushchair out of the flat, leaving the door open and hurtling back down the stairs.

-*-

There was a weird smell in this new place. Like old ladies and damp and dust and boxes of stuff that hadn’t been touched in years. The long, old hall with its low beams and creaking floorboards echoed creepily as they walked across it to get to the carpeted back room. There was a sink but when Tino twisted the rusty tap on, it creaked and groaned but no water came out. Sammy and Adil were sitting on wooden folding chairs whilst Tino sat on the mildewed carpet with his back against an old sideboard full of cracked and dirty china.

“Ok. So I know this guy,” Adil was saying. “He’s a good guy, straight up — he’s going to spread the word about our gear.”

“We’ve never met him,” Sammy said. “How do we know he’s a good guy?”

“Because I said so,” Adil told him.

“Back me up Tino,” Sammy said.

Tino pulled himself away from watching the progress of a small spider making its way across the corner of the ceiling. “I dunno…” he began hesitantly, looking between Sammy and Adil’s pumped-up expressions.

“How else do you reckon we’re gonna sell it?” Adil asked.

“No, it’s just…” Tino shifted a little under Adil’s glare and remembered the gun. And the blood. “Telling people about us. It’s gonna make it easier for the cops to link us with Paul’s murder, innit?”

“Bloody hell Tino, don’t be such a pussy.” Adil shook his head. “Keep your fucking mouth shut and it’ll be fine.”

Tino resumed his observation of the spider. Sammy tugged at his bottom lip and an uncomfortable silence fell over the room. It was interrupted by a loud knocking on the back door. Tino hoped the others hadn’t seen him jump. Adil held up a finger to indicate no noise and pulled his gun out of his jacket. Tino could hear his own heart thumping in his chest. One thought raced through his mind: he’s going to kill a fucking cop. Adil lifted the grubby curtain and peered out through the dirty window. He sighed, put the gun away and opened the door.

“What the fuck are you doing here Danny?”

“Come to get more gear,” Danny explained, pulling his hood down. “I’m going out again tonight.”

“You’re not supposed to come here,” Adil told him angrily.

Danny shrugged. “Your guy didn’t show up where I was expecting him.”

They’d forgotten to send him, Tino realised. Donald — Sammy’s cousin’s mate, who lived on the floor below Tino. He was supposed to take the stuff and hand it over to Danny round the back of their old school. He’d probably heard about Paul and got scared but they hadn’t bothered to call him and find out. They kept forgetting things like that. Adil stared Danny out for a moment but Danny just stared back with his eyebrow half-raised in amusement. Adil seemed lost for an answer, not wanting to admit they’d messed up - again. “Where’s the other hundred?” he demanded instead.

Danny pulled a roll of notes out of his back pocket. “Here. And there’s the four hundred for tonight’s load too.”

After a protracted period of counting, mouthing the numbers and using his fingers, Adil was finally satisfied. He nodded to Tino and Sammy. “Give him the stuff.”

Sammy folded his arms across his chest and didn’t budge, so Tino pushed himself to his feet and opened the creaking old metal cupboard in the corner. He handed over a carrier bag and Danny took it with a smirk.

“And don’t fucking come here again, Danny, ok?” Adil told him.

“Ok - don’t stress,” Danny laughed. “I’ll see you around.” He stuffed the carrier bag inside his jacket and flipped his hood back up. He opened the door a crack and took a quick look out before hurrying out into the evening.

The door, hanging on its hinges at an odd angle, swung shut with a loud bang, bringing up a cloud of dust and damp that shot straight into Tino’s nostrils. He snorted it back out again. Sammy nodded to the money that Adil was counting out again on the old draining board.

“Do we get our cut now?” he asked.

“Not yet.” Adil folded up the money and bundled it into a carrier bag. “We’ll split it when it’s all sold.”

Tino looked at the stack of packets in the cupboard. Sammy was looking at them too but when he tried to catch Tino’s eye, he looked quickly away. Tino thought about the gun and the blood again. The evening light was fading now so they’d have to get out soon. They couldn’t turn the lights on in case anyone saw them. Tino shut the cupboard door and watched as Adil rolled back the tattered carpet and stashed the carrier bag under a loose floorboard.

-*-

Ianto had long ago stopped trying to work out if his impeccable timing was the result of careful character study and analysis of patterns of behaviour or just plain spooky. Either way, Jack and Gwen came tumbling through the cog door barely five minutes after the Chinese arrived.

“The weary travellers return.” He grinned and held up the bags. “Just in time — I got dinner.”

“Magic, thanks Ianto,” Gwen said as she passed him. “I’ll…uh…just wash my hands.” She held up her palms which were stained a deep purple.

“I told you not to touch that end of it,” Jack called after her, chuckling. Ianto followed him up to the meeting room. Jack and Gwen had called in just before lunch to tell him that they were giving chase to a six-foot bipedal squid-like creature and could he please check through some CCTV footage for them? He wouldn’t put it past the pair of them to have sought out some beetroot and concocted the whole story, just to get out of reviewing CCTV images.

“I’ve got through most of the footage,” Ianto told Jack as he handed out food. “We can go through the rest over dinner.”

He smiled and un-paused the big screen at the end of the table. Jack had already shovelled a mouthful of noodles in and could only look at Ianto sheepishly over the top of the carton. Gwen joined them, sighing despondently when she saw what the dinnertime entertainment was, and sank down opposite Ianto, dragging the Kung Pao chicken towards her.

“Successful day?” Ianto enquired, keeping his eyes glued to the screen as he tucked in his napkin.

“Not really,” Gwen said. “The only thing Jules’ friends agree on is that he normally bought his drugs from Mark Edwards but Mark swears that Jules didn’t buy them from him last night.”

“And I believe him,” Jack added, half a noodle escaping down his chin. It dropped onto his chest and he spent some time chasing it round his shirtfront.

“So we’re no closer to finding our mystery drug dealer then?” Ianto surmised.

“No,” Gwen admitted.

“Fabulous.” Ianto nibbled at a sweet and sour pork ball. “And by the way, I managed to calm down a rather irate hospital site manager who was apoplectic about a corpse being stolen from the back of an ambulance last night.”

“Thanks Ianto.” Gwen smiled sweetly at him across the table. “We owe you.”

Ianto was about to offer a suggestion as to how exactly Gwen could repay her debt, when Jack suddenly dropped his noodles. “Bingo!” Jack pointed excitedly at the screen with a chopstick. “There’s our guys." On the screen, grainy images of Jules, Mark and Kevin walked into the club. “Can we track them?” Jack asked.

“Sure.” Ianto put down his own chopsticks and pulled a keyboard towards him. He typed in a few commands and switched to the footage from another camera, following the three men through the club. They’d just reached the bar when a rift alert started flashing in the bottom corner of the screen. Ianto called it up. “It’s at Glitter.”

“What’s Glitter?” Jack asked.

“Nightclub on Park Place,” Ianto told him.

“That’s exactly the same pattern as last night.” Jack tossed his chopsticks into his noodles like tiny javelins and stood up. “Let’s go.”


	5. Chapter 5

The SUV slammed to a seatbelt-testing halt outside Glitter. The club’s name was scrawled in looping, neon pink lettering above its dingy doorway. Ianto already had his Tupperware to hand as they stepped out and headed towards the club. Jack flashed some ID or other and silenced any questions the bouncer might have had. The music inside was painfully loud, though Ianto did at least recognise some of it. ‘Nineties Night’, the poster on the wall declared. So it was official — Ianto was old. The music of his teenage years was now the soundtrack to theme nights in tacky Cardiff nightclubs.

As he mused on this sad fact, someone bumped shoulders with him on their way out of the door. “Sorry mate,” the guy muttered. Ianto mumbled his own apology and frowned; there was something familiar about the blonde hair and too-square shoulders. He shrugged off the thought and followed Jack and Gwen into the bowels of the club.

Jack came to a stop outside the men’s toilets. “This seems familiar.” He consulted his wrist strap. “Come on Ianto.”

Jack shoved open the door and Ianto followed, leaving Gwen to hover in the corridor. A crowd had formed a curious horseshoe around the Greek tragedy being played out on the wet floor. A skinny young guy, probably mid-twenties, though he could have passed for younger, was cradling a glassy-eyed, bulkier man of a similar age, rocking the body back and forth with tears streaming down his blotchy cheeks.

“Come on Toby,” he wheedled, desperately. “Come on.”

Toby remained obstinately dead. Jack knelt quietly beside the young man and put a hand on his shoulder. “What happened?” he asked.

“He OD’d,” the skinny guy replied, face crumpling as the realisation that Toby was dead hit him. He pushed his face into Toby’s hair, dripping tears and snot into it. “You idiot Toby. You idiot.”

“Has anyone called an ambulance?” Ianto asked the nearest bystander.

“Yeah,” the man told him.

Ianto stuck his head out into the corridor. “Can you call off the ambulance that’s headed here?” he asked Gwen.

“Sure,” Gwen said, already pulling out her phone. “Is it..?”

“Another OD, yeah,” Ianto confirmed. “He’s dead.” He pulled an appropriately sympathetic grimace. “Ok — everybody out,” he instructed as he stepped back inside the toilets. “Please. This is a crime scene.”

The audience of men reluctantly shuffled out of the toilets. The young man was still clinging tightly to Toby’s lifeless form and crying noisily. Jack took his hand off his shoulder and stood up, looking across at Ianto with a helpless shrug. Ianto crouched down and took Jack’s place.

“What’s your name?” Ianto asked.

“Seb,” the young man told him, sniffing loudly, his breathing laboured.

“Ok, Seb - have you taken anything tonight?”

Seb’s eyes widened, scared. “No.” He shook his head vigorously.

“We’re not cops Seb,” Ianto told him. “You’re not going to get in trouble. But you need to tell me if you’ve taken anything.”

Seb shook his head again. Ianto grabbed his chin and peered into his eyes. They were bloodshot with crying and beer, but his pupils appeared fine. “Good.” He let go of Seb’s chin and looked down at Toby’s body. “Was he — your boyfriend?”

Seb shook his head again. “Best mate.”

“Where was Toby taking the drugs Seb?” Jack asked, gesturing to the row of cubicles. Seb lifted a shaky arm and pointed to one of them.

Whilst Ianto was wondering what in hell he was going to do with this sobbing wreck of a drunkard, as if on cue, Gwen walked in. Ianto clapped Seb on the shoulder and stood up in relief. “I think you should go and have a chat with my colleague Seb,” he suggested. Ianto smiled hopefully at Gwen who shot back a look which he understood to mean that he was going to be paying her back for this later. Fair enough. In any case, Ianto would happily take Gwen’s turn at cleaning out the weevils if it meant he didn’t have to deal with the emotional bereaved.

Seb looked up forlornly at Gwen who smiled sympathetically. “Come on, sweetheart.” Gwen bent down and gently eased Toby’s body out of Seb’s arms. “Let’s get you something to drink, shall we?” She took Seb’s elbow, tugged him to his feet and led him towards the door. Seb took one last look back before following her out of the toilets.

Jack crouched down beside the body. “Poor bastard.” He reverently stroked Toby’s eyes closed.

“Stupid bastard,” Ianto countered. He snapped on a pair of disposable gloves and removed a brush and a Tupperware box from his carrying case.

Jack stood up and stuffed his hands into his pockets. “We’ve all been there.”

“Speak for yourself.” Ianto shouldered open the cubicle door and set to work with his brush.

“Seriously? I refuse to believe that you’ve never done drugs.” Ianto could hear the grin in Jack’s voice. “I have it on good authority that you were quite the rebel in your youth.”

Ianto spotted a half empty packet of white powder on the cubicle floor, gingerly picked it up between forefinger and thumb and dropped it neatly into a plastic box. “The occasional spliff is hardly in the same league as snorting cocaine off a toilet tank.” There had been a time, in London, when it had been more than the occasional spliff. But it had never been anything harder than weed and Ianto’s drug of choice would always remain good old dependable and completely legal alcohol. Jack snorted disbelievingly. Ianto backed out of the cubicle and saw him leaning up against the sinks. “Perhaps you could fetch a body bag for party boy there?” he suggested flatly.

“Yes sir.” Jack grinned, gave him a cheeky salute and swept out through the heavy swing door.

-*-

Wrapped in a blanket and huddled on a plastic chair, cheeks puffy and red, Seb looked even younger than the twenty-four years he claimed to be. His light brown hair was a shade darker where it was plastered to his forehead with sweat. It was hot and stuffy in the manager’s office but Seb was shivering as Gwen handed him a mug and sat down opposite.

“There we are,” she smiled. “Cup of tea. Best remedy. That’s what my mam always says anyway.”

Seb wrapped his hands around the tea and didn’t even crack a smile. Gwen leant her elbows on the desk and waited a moment. This was the bit she’d always been good at when she was in the police. And even if she hadn’t have been, she’d still be better at it than Jack, who’d veer between flirtatious and unfeeling, and Ianto, who found displays of emotion uncomfortable. She purposefully didn’t get out a notebook. People always said more when they didn’t think it was an interview.

“Had you known Toby long?” she asked eventually, cupping her chin with her hands and trying to meet Seb’s eyes.

Seb nodded without looking up. “Five years,” he said. “We, uh, met at Uni.”

“He was a good mate?” she probed.

Seb nodded, still not looking up. “Yeah.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I was going to do it too, you know. It’s just, he went first. He always went first. I always followed.” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “Fuck.” He put the mug down on the desk with a thump.

“Tell me what happened,” Gwen said gently.

“He, uh, he had the line, on the toilet seat, like usual,” Seb began stutteringly. “He snorted it and then I was just about to do mine when he started fitting.” He blinked furiously as he recalled, his fingers clawing at the arms of the chair. “I couldn’t stop him, he wouldn’t stop.” He choked up and clapped a hand over his mouth.

“It’s ok, Seb.” Gwen stood up and went round the desk, perching on the edge of it and covering his hand on the arm of the chair. “Did you and Toby do drugs a lot?”

Seb took a deep breath to compose himself. He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Once a month, tops. When we wanted an epic night, you know?”

“Where do you get them from?” Gwen asked.

“Well, we…we have a dealer,” Seb stammered. “A mate of a mate. But…we couldn’t get hold of him tonight. Toby was shooting his mouth off about it when we got here, he’d had a bit to drink, and this guy overheard him and offered to sell us some coke.”

“Can you describe him?” Gwen asked.

Seb shrugged. “Young, early twenties, blonde - muscles. Sharp dresser, you know? Like he thought a lot of himself. Pretty confident.”

“No name?” Gwen enquired.

Seb shook his head. “No.”

“And you’d never seen him before?” Gwen asked.

Seb shook his head again. “Don’t think so.”

“Well, that’s very helpful anyway Seb.” Gwen gave his shoulder a sympathetic pat. “You can go now, if you like.”

“Oh.” Seb pulled his mug towards him. He hadn’t touched it.

“Or - we can sit here a bit longer if you like?” Gwen suggested knowingly.

Seb blinked up at her and sniffed. “Aren’t you going to arrest me?”

“Nope,” Gwen told him.

He frowned. “But — the drugs?”

“We’re not the police.”

His frown deepened. “Then who are you?”

“Sort of — special ops,” Gwen explained. “We’ve got bigger fish to catch.”

“Oh.” Seb wiped the back of his hand across his face and lapsed into silence again, staring down at his reflection in his mug of gently swelling milky tea. Gwen sighed and sat back down opposite. Ianto was going to be doing a lot of cleaning in the vaults this week.

-*-

Ianto ran the scanner round the cubicle and it came back clear. “All done in here,” he reported, backing out and packing the scanner into the carry case. Jack was making a series of unflattering faces and sounds as he wrestled Toby’s corpse into the body bag. Ianto neatly stored his Tupperware away with the scanner, unreasonably pleased at the way the boxes fitted like a precision-assembled jigsaw inside the case.

“Ok.” Jack zipped up the body bag with a flourish. “Let’s get our friend here back to the Hub.”

Ianto shouldered the carry case and stood beside the corpse. “Head or feet?”

Jack leered up at him. “I think you know my preference.”

“I’ll try to ignore the disturbing overtones,” Ianto remarked. “You take the feet. Less innuendo there.”

Jack laughed as he grabbed the feet and stood up. “Oh, you think?”

Ianto rolled his eyes and picked up the other end of the corpse. Sometimes gallows humour was the only thing that got them through the day. Extra-terrestrial life wasn’t all gleaming technology and glamour — sometimes it was violent death and rusty space crap and scraping all manner of semi-viscous substances off the pavement and themselves. And, sometimes, it was dealing with an overdosed corpse in a dingy nightclub toilet. Ianto didn’t even let out the smallest sigh as he pushed the toilet open with his backside and lugged the body out into the corridor.

-*-

Tino blew out a slow stream of smoke that hovered for a second before drifting off through the beam of the security light mounted on the industrial unit that backed onto the unsurfaced car park. He, Sammy and Adil were perched on adjacent concrete bollards that stood guard along the chain link fence. Tino pulled his hood further up and stared across at the wall opposite, trying to make sense of the graffiti. He never could make sense of graffiti. There was a strong breeze tonight, buffeting the weeds and grass growing up through the thin scalpings and along the foot of the fence.

They sat in silence because they had nothing to say to one another that didn’t end in Sammy and Adil at each other’s throats. Tino remembered coming here a few years ago to play football with Sammy and a bunch of lads from the Towers, their shouts and the prang of the football pinballing around the car park floating off into the night air as they skidded around on the loose surface. They’d smoked then, too, between games — catching their breath and horsing around. Now it was just the three of them, in silence.

Scuffing footsteps echoed from the passageway between the two units. Tino tensed. Adil was on his feet immediately, gun out. The click as he released the safety was as loud in Tino’s ears as a gunshot.

“Put the fucking gun down Adil, it’s me,” Danny hissed, emerging from the shadows with a beanie pulled down over his hair and his jacket collar turned up.

Adil lowered the gun and flicked the safety back on. Tino breathed again. “Have you got the money?” Adil asked.

“Course.” Danny took an envelope out of his back pocket and handed it over.

Adil tucked his gun back into his waistband and started the laborious process of counting it. Sammy finished his cigarette and flicked the butt away. It landed in the dirty gravel and glowed there for a while. Tino drummed the fingernails of his free hand against the rough concrete between his legs.

“You’re a hundred short,” Adil said eventually.

“I didn’t sell it all tonight,” Danny shrugged. “I’ll make it up tomorrow night.”

“What the fuck?” Adil snapped, taking a step towards Danny and waving the bundle of notes angrily. “Are you trying to cheat me?”

Sammy stood up, hands linked through the pocket of his hoodie, squaring his shoulders. “Us,” Sammy corrected Adil. “Cheat _us_.” Tino dug his fingertips into the concrete until it pulled painfully at his nails.

“No, I’m for real,” Danny assured them. “You wouldn’t have sold anything if it wasn’t for me.”

“We found it,” Sammy reminded him, manoeuvring himself between Danny and Adil. “We want our money.”

“You’ll get it,” Danny told him.

“We’d better,” Adil warned him, stepping back in front of Sammy. “You know what happened to Paul.”

“Yeah. I heard about that.” Danny smiled. “Possession of a Class A drug or murder — I wonder which of us would come off worse if I went to the cops?”

Adil’s hand flew to his waistband. “You wouldn’t fucking dare.”

Danny shook his head with a derisive snort. “Where can I pick the next lot of gear up from?”

Adil scrunched up his face, irritated that Danny wasn’t more intimidated by his threats, and handed over a piece of paper. “This is the address. You’ll get more instructions when you get there.”

Danny pocketed the paper. “See you around lads. Always a pleasure doing business.” He tipped two fingers to them and disappeared back into the night.

“Do you think he’ll go to the cops?” Tino asked, stubbing out the miniscule remains of his cigarette on the side of the bollard.

“Course not,” Adil said, dismissively.

“He might,” Tino muttered.

“He won’t,” Adil stated firmly.

Sammy sunk back down on his bollard. “The police have been asking round the Towers, about Paul,” he said. “He didn’t even live in the Towers. Someone must have told them something.”

“Just stay cool, alright?” Adil pointed at them both accusatively. “There’s nothing to connect us with Paul, ok? No one knows. Just stay cool.”

“What about the gun?” Tino asked, his voice small and shrinking further under Adil’s glare. “I’ve seen it on TV — the cops can trace the gun.”

Adil shook his head irritably. “Shut up Tino.” He stuffed the envelope of cash into his pocket. “Come on.” Tino and Sammy exchanged disgruntled looks but they still followed him out of the car park. They had nowhere else to go.

-*-

“He said they got the drugs from a new dealer tonight,” Gwen reported as she and Ianto stood at the railing above the autopsy bay watching Jack working on Toby’s corpse. “He’d never seen him before.”

“Well, there’s a link then,” Jack noted. He frowned in concentration as he opened up the chest cavity. “Both victims got their drugs from new suppliers.”

There was a sickening crunch as he forced open the breast bone. Ianto wrinkled his nose in disgust — that was a noise that was going to stay with him. He was certain that corpses had never made that noise when Owen had worked on them — and there had been significantly less spattering.

“Which might suggest it’s someone who recently came into a large supply of drugs,” Jack continued.

“Via the Rift,” Gwen suggested.

“Exactly.” Jack shoved a gloved hand into the chest, wiggled it around, grunted and pulled out the heart. “Oh. Hmm.” He shrugged and dumped the heart into a metal tray. He wiped his hands down his front, which, thankfully, was covered by a green apron. Ianto made a mental note to step up the hunt for a new doctor, preferably one with a bit of finesse. Even Gwen looked a little disgusted by this autopsy.

“Anyway, he described the guy that sold it to them,” Gwen continued, her nose wrinkling. “Young, blonde, muscles — sharp dresser.”

Ianto’s head snapped up suddenly as the description ran through his memory banks and came up with a match - the toilets in Neo and the front door of Glitter. He smiled. “I’ve seen him before!” he announced, and dashed back out into the Hub. Sitting down at one of the workstations, he called up the CCTV footage they’d taken from Glitter. Gwen came and stood behind him and they watched as the SUV pulled up outside the club and the three of them stepped out. As they entered the club, a blonde, muscled, sharply dressed young man emerged and bumped into Ianto.

“There.” Ianto paused the footage and pointed to the screen. “That guy — going into Glitter, and I saw him last night too, coming out of the toilets at Neo.”

Jack walked up behind them. “Coincidence?”

“A young, blonde, well-dressed coincidence?” Ianto queried.

“Good point,” Jack acknowledged.

Ianto hit a few keys on the keyboard. “We can track him back through the club. See if he’s our guy.” On the computer screen, the CCTV rewound through the man's actions, following him back into the club. Ianto grinned and paused the footage again. “Gotcha.” He pointed to a frozen image of the young man handing over a package to Toby. “I think we have our man.”

“Can you run the facial recognition software on him?” Jack asked.

“I can give it a go.” Ianto tapped away at the keyboard. The computer homed in on the man’s face and scanned through a series of mugshots down the right hand side of the screen until it came to halt, blinking to indicate a match.

“That’s our man.” Ianto read from the screen. “Daniel Myers. Twenty-three. Done a bit of community service for petty theft and minor drug offences. One count of failure to pay council tax.” He scrolled through the rest of the information, skim-reading it. “Bit of a small time hustler by all accounts. Works in a supermarket, lives in Riverside.” He spotted something at the bottom of the screen. “Hang on.” He read curiously. “One of his drug convictions — he was tried at the same time as Paul Hughes.”

“Who’s Paul Hughes?” Jack asked.

“Honestly Jack, do you live in your own little bubble?” Gwen asked incredulously. “Paul Hughes is Alistair Hughes’ son. He was murdered yesterday — disagreement with a drugs gang.”

“Oh really?” Jack pulled the face that made an appearance only when he’d made a breakthrough in a case or was about to get lucky. “Right.” He was already grabbing for his coat. “Gwen — you and I are going to pay Mr Myers a visit. Ianto — see if you can find out who’s the investigating officer on the Paul Hughes case and get as much info as you can out of them.”

Ianto nodded. He felt the usual satisfying adrenalin surge he always did when a lead opened up. The pieces were starting to fall into place, even if they hadn’t quite worked out where they were all going to land yet. He shrunk the CCTV footage down and called up the police server login screen as Jack and Gwen hurried out of the Hub.

-*-

Danny leaned heavily on the surface whilst he waited for the kettle to boil. His mug sat ready and waiting with a generous heap of instant coffee. He was on the late shift tomorrow, thankfully. After he’d made the drop-off with Paul’s little mates, he’d turned down Digger’s offer a messy night out and hit the gym for an extra long workout. Now he was showered and pumped full of adrenaline that would keep sleep at bay for some time.

The kettle reached its frantic boiling point and clicked off. In the sudden quiet that followed, Danny heard a car pulling up outside. The lights swept across his window. He prised apart the blinds with his finger and thumb and peered out. A black SUV had parked up on the grass verge outside his building. A tall bloke in a long blue coat and a woman in a leather jacket got out. They slammed the car doors shut and strode towards the front door.

“Shit.” Danny put down the kettle, pulled a hoodie over his head and rammed his bare feet into his trainers. He grabbed his keys and phone from the coffee table and burst out of his front door. He paused in the stairwell and peered over the bannisters. The bloke and the woman were on their way up. Maybe they weren’t even coming for him but Danny wasn’t taking chances. He flipped up his hood and hurried on down. Pushing between the two of them with his head bowed, he started to run.

“Hey!” the tall bloke called, taking a flying down the steps and grabbing hold of Danny’s arms.

“Get the fuck off me!” Danny yelled, struggling in the man’s grip. Danny could bench press 40kg but he was no match for this guy.

He held Danny still from behind and put his mouth next to Danny’s ear. “Give it up Danny boy,” he said in an American accent, his breath warm on Danny’s neck. “We know who you are.”

Danny struggled again fruitlessly. “Fuck off!”

“As much as I enjoy a spot of wrestling with a handsome young man, I don’t think you wanna wake your neighbours, do you?” the man asked.

Danny conceded with a frustrated groan. The woman stuck her face over the stair rail above them. “If you’re quite finished flirting with the suspect Jack?” She was Welsh, at least.

“He’s all yours,” Jack told her. He grabbed Danny by the scruff of the neck and frog marched him back upstairs. The woman followed, taking Danny’s keys from him and opening his front door. Jack flung Danny onto the sofa in his living room.

“Interrogate away Agent Cooper,” he said, standing to one side, arms folded threateningly across his chest. Cooper sat down on the coffee table. Danny leant back into the sofa cushions, nervous.

“Agent?” he queried, looking between them. “What are you — like spies?”

“Much worse,” Cooper told him pleasantly. She smiled a disarming, gap-toothed smile. She produced a notebook and pen from her jacket. “Now then Mr Myers. We know a lot about you. Where did you get the drugs you’ve been selling?”

“What drugs?” Danny asked. He’d rehearsed this in his head ever since he first start selling the new stuff. He’d lied and squirmed his way out of (and into) convictions for small time deals many times but this was different.

“Don’t patronise me Danny,” Cooper said. “Where did you get them?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh come on now Danny, don’t play dumb,” she pressed, still smiling. “Even if you were stupid enough to deal drugs in full view of a CCTV camera, I’m sure you’re not that stupid.”

Danny felt his face freeze; felt the blood draining away from his cheeks and temples. His skin flushed hot down his neck and his heart sped up, thundering in his ears. Sweat crept into the small of his back and trickled down between his butt cheeks. “I don’t know where they came from.” His throat was dry. His voice was uncertain. She was staring at him and she knew he was lying.

“You must have some idea,” Cooper pushed.

“I bought them off a bloke,” Danny told her.

“Who?” she asked.

“I dunno.” Danny could feel the cover story spiralling out of his control. “I never saw his face.”

“How did you find out about him?”

Danny tried a nonchalant shrug but his shoulders twitched in a self-conscious spasm. “Just bumped into him.”

Jack suddenly stepped in, pressing his face into Danny’s and looming over him. “See now, I think you’re lying,” Jack snarled. “‘Cause I don’t think it sounds all that probable to me — bumping into a masked man in the street who just offers you cocaine.”

“Yeah, well, that’s what happened,” Danny croaked.

Jack’s hand went to Danny’s throat, his thumb pressing a spot on Danny’s neck. Danny found himself paralysed, unable to fight back. Jack’s face was so close he could see the pores in his skin and the shiny white of his perfect American teeth. “Two people have died taking the drugs you sold them,” Jack growled. “God knows how many more you’ve sold it to are in danger. Where did you get them from?”

“I’m not telling you,” Danny gasped.

“Ah-ha, now we get a little closer to the truth,” Jack said. “You’re protecting someone.” He tilted his head to one side. “Or are you just scared of what they’ll do to you if you tell?” He pushed his thumb deeper into Danny’s throat. “‘Cause I gotta tell you, I’m pretty good at torture, and I’m not afraid to go through with it.” He snapped his dazzling teeth together. “I can keep you right on the edge of death for a very long time.”

The thumb went deeper still. Danny heard himself make a choking noise. His head was floating off above his shoulders, he couldn’t seem to snatch any air into his lungs and his arms were lying uselessly by his side. With his free hand, Jack flipped back his coat and pulled an old-fashioned revolver out of the holster on his belt. Danny flinched when he flicked off the safety catch and again when Jack touched the gun against his temple.

“I’ll ask again,” Jack said. “Who sold you the drugs?”

Danny tried to blink away the blurry spots floating around in front of his eyes. The gun was cold against his head. He could feel his balls sweating against rough denim. He really didn’t want to die with no pants on.

“Ok, I’ll tell you,” he gasped.

“Good boy.” Jack released his thumb and Danny felt blood rushing back to his extremities, followed by a painful tingling. The gun remained against Danny’s head.

“There’s three of them,” Danny told them. “Three kids. I don’t know their names though.”

The thumb was back at Danny’s throat before he knew what was happening.

“Adil!” Danny yelled. The thumb was removed. “The leader, he’s called Adil,” Danny continued, swallowing painfully. “I don’t know about the other two. Adil never told me their names. Paul Hughes was in their gang too but he’s dead now.”

“We heard,” Jack said. “Where can we find them?”

“I don’t know.” Danny saw the thumb coming this time. “I don’t!” he protested quickly. “They move around a lot. Last I knew they were hanging out in an old church hall, Star Street, Adamsdown.”

Jack eyeballed Danny for a moment, then seemed satisfied. Danny looked into Jack’s eyes and shivered; they were cold and knowing and terrifying. Jack straightened up and re-holstered his gun. Danny rubbed at the sore spot on his throat.

Jack stepped back and Cooper leant back in. “Now we need to know exactly who you’ve sold this stuff to,” she said. She offered Danny the notepad and pencil. “Names, if you know them, times, places, descriptions. Any details you can think of.”

Danny looked at her and then back up at Jack who was standing with his hands on his hips. The spot on Danny’s neck was still throbbing. He sat forward, took the notebook and started to write.

-*-

Jack and Gwen left Danny’s flat with a stash of drugs and a notebook full of badly spelt intelligence.

“That was…” Gwen began as they clattered down the stairwell.

“What?” Jack asked.

“A bit heavy,” she finished.

“He needed a good scare, that’s all,” Jack said with a shrug. “Pathetic guys like that’ll do anything to save their skin.”

“Right,” Gwen said uneasily. Every time she saw Jack like that she was reminded that he was so much more than the innuendo-cracking flirt that he sometimes appeared to be. She loved him but he scared her in a way Rhys never did. Those were the times when she didn’t envy Ianto at all.

Jack took out his phone and dialled. “Yeah, this is Captain Jack Harkness, Torchwood authorisation 474317. I need you to send a couple of officers to Flat 4, 32 Coldstream Terrace, Riverside and arrest a Daniel Myers. He’s got a flat full of narcotics.” He hung up with a flourish and stuffed the phone back in his pocket.

“That’s unusually community-minded of you,” Gwen remarked as they reached the bottom of the stairs and walked out into the night.

“Nah, I need him out of the way. Don’t want him talking to his little mates.” Jack unlocked the SUV and checked his watch. “It’s late,” he said. “I’ll take you back to the Hub to pick up your car and we’ll head round to that church hall in the morning.”

-*-

Tino’s alarm was going off and he’d only been in bed a couple of hours. He dragged open sore eyes and gazed out across the scattered clothes to find Beyoncé and Malcolm X staring down at him, disapproving as always. He blinked again and realised his phone was ringing. He reached out a hand, groped over an ashtray and half-smoked joint and found his mobile.

“Yeah?” he answered.

“We’ve got to get the gear now,” Adil told him.

“What?” he asked groggily.

“We’ve got to get the gear,” Adil repeated.

Tino struggled into a sitting position and rubbed his eyes. The skunk had made his head fuzzy and he felt sick. “Why?”

“Danny’s been arrested,” Adil explained. “He might talk.”

“Fuck.” Tino got out of bed and started to drag on his jeans one-handed. “Where are you?”

“I’m outside your place,” Adil told him. “Hurry the fuck up. We’ll go get Sammy and then move the stuff. I know a new place we can hide out.”

“Ok.” Tino looked around, his head still all over the place. “Ok. I’m coming.”

He hung up and put his phone in his pocket. He felt really sick now. Sammy’s mate had sold him that skunk and it was a lot stronger than anything he had smoked before. Tino pulled on a t-shirt and stumbled to the bathroom. He leant over the toilet and retched up last night’s pizza, watching it splatter around the bowl. He dry heaved for a bit, a sheen of cold sweat forming across his forehead. The doorbell rang, persistently.

“Fuck.” He knew this was going to happen eventually. Doorbell ringing in the middle of the night. Running. Covering their tracks. If he wasn’t feeling so ill, he’d be scared out of his mind. Tino dragged himself to his feet and splashed water on his face. The doorbell was still ringing. He ran down the hallway and looked through the spyhole — it was Adil, with a rucksack on his back.

“Fuck’s sake man — what you doing?” Tino asked as he opened the door.

“Hurry the fuck up!” Adil snapped.

Tino reached down and swiped an old rucksack from the floor. “Tino!” His mother appeared in the hallway - an indomitable giant of a Jamaican woman in nightdress and dressing gown. “What on earth do you think you are doing?”

“Um…” Tino hesitated, his brain still half asleep and unable to find a lie. Not that it would do any good. His mum could spot his lies a mile off.

His mother looked past him and saw Adil hovering outside the door. “And what is he doing here?”

Tino decided not to even try a lie. “See you later Mum,” he said cheerfully.

“What do you mean you’ll see me later?” she thundered. “You’re not going anywhere young man — it’s four o’clock in the morning.” Tino winced and ducked out of the door. “I am going to tan your hide when you get back, little boy,” she yelled as he shut it behind him. “Disrespecting your mother like that!”

Her muffled yelling continued, but he knew she wouldn’t follow him. For all her threats, she never did. Not these days. Adil was already halfway down the walkway, banging on Sammy’s front door. Tino took a deep breath and jogged along to join him.


	6. Chapter 6

The rain hammered down relentlessly. It came straight down in sheets, thundering onto the pavements and bouncing off the roads. Gwen’s wipers waved valiantly back and forth, sluicing wave after wave off her windscreen. She leant forward over the steering wheel and peered out into the deluge, spotting the sign for Star Street just as she clocked the SUV parked up outside the abandoned church hall. Pulling up alongside it, she stepped out of her car straight into a puddle that instantly soaked through her shoes. Jack climbed out of the SUV, turning up his collar.

“Gotta love the Welsh summer,” he greeted her ebulliently.

“You should be used to it by now,” Gwen retorted.

She followed him quickly over to the hall. Already, the rain was sliding down her neck and running into her eyes. She wiped her face on the damp shoulder of her jacket, pulled out her gun and backed up against the wall beside the door. It was padlocked shut but the warped, rotten wood was so riddled with holes that the lock wasn’t likely to deter any intruders. His gun at the ready, Jack gave a brief nod which Gwen returned. He whipped round and burst the disintegrating door off its hinges.

The hall was empty. The rain pelted the tin roof noisily and Gwen wrinkled her nose as she followed Jack in. It smelt of must and damp and disuse. The floorboards were scuffed and scored. A dusty dartboard hung on the back wall, the scoreboard swinging crookedly by one corner beside it with the chalked up scores of a half-finished game frozen in time. A pile of trestle tables slumped against another wall. Otherwise, nothing.

Jack’s boots clumped hollowly up the empty hall to a door at the back. It opened into a kitchen that smelt even worse than the rest of the hall. It too was empty.

“Looks like we’re too late.” Gwen lowered her gun. “Danny?” she suggested.

“More loyal than we thought,” Jack mused. “Or maybe they just got wind of his arrest.” He opened a few cupboards. The faded mint green laminate fronts were peeling away from the cheap wood underneath. Most were bare, although one contained a chipped glass jug full of dead flies.

“What are you looking for?” Gwen asked.

“Where would you hide drugs in a place like this?” Jack yanked out a stiff draw that squealed on its runners.

“Obvious,” Gwen said. “Under the floorboards.” She pushed her gun into her waistband. “I did a few drugs busts in my time on the force.” Squatting down, she began to peel back the frayed carpet.

Jack poked at one of the exposed floorboards with the toe of his boot. “Half of them are rotten anyway.”

Gwen rolled the carpet right up against the wall. It was damp and dirty and she wiped her hands off on her jeans. Several spiders and a colony of woodlice scuttled for cover. She slipped her fingers into the gaps and holes in the sagging boards and tugged at them. The third one came loose. “Ta-da!” She lifted it up and pushed it to one side. A white carrier bag was nestled in the space underneath. Gwen reached down and pulled it out.

“Careful with that,” Jack warned her. “This stuff is pretty powerful.”

Gwen peered cautiously into the carrier bag. “Oh.”

“What?”

Gwen held the bag up to show him. It was stuffed full of bank notes. “Not drugs then,” she remarked.

“No,” Jack agreed. He looked around. “Ok, here’s what we do,” he said. “We put everything back as it was. There must be over a grand in there so someone’s gonna wanna come back for it. We’ll take turns to keep watch.” He tried the handle of the back door. It was locked. “Whoever they are, they’ve got keys.”

Gwen wrapped the bundle of money back up and replaced the bag under the floorboards. They rolled the smelly carpet back into place.

“You can take first watch,” Jack told her as they walked out through the hall. “Call us if you see anything but don’t try and intervene. Get a description, follow them if you can, but stay hidden. Danny said they have a gun — they might get nervous and trigger happy. Ok?”

“Yep,” Gwen nodded.

They paused at the door, looking out at the rain. Jack held out his hand. “Car keys?”

“What?” Gwen asked.

“You’ll need the SUV and I am not walking back to the Hub in this,” Jack explained.

Gwen sighed despondently — she liked her car and she was all-too-familiar with Jack’s driving. She reached for her car keys. “Are you insured?” she asked.

Jack grinned at her as he took the keys. “Relax,” Jack told her. “I’m an excellent driver. I’ll send Ianto to relieve you in a couple of hours.”

He made a dash for her car. Gwen shoved the door shut and arranged the hinges and padlock as well as she could to make it look as if nothing was out of place. She squelched despondently over to the SUV as Jack spun her car in a hairpin turn and squealed off up the road.

-*-

The warehouse was too big for Tino’s liking; too exposed and too many doors. The rain was dripping through a leak in one corner of the roof, landing with a rhythmic clang on the metal steps below. The scraping of Sammy and Adil moving old crates around reverberated painfully loudly in the cavernous space.

“Come on Tino, give us a hand.” Sammy had started unloading the drugs from his rucksack into the boxes.

“I’m keeping guard,” Tino told him, rocking back and forth on his heels, his fidgeting fingers buried deep into the pockets of his jeans.

“For fuck’s sake Tino,” Adil sighed. “No one knows we’re here and no one’s used this place for months. Trust me.”

Tino reluctantly joined them, kneeling on the dirty floor and stashing the drugs away. They filled one crate and half-filled another with the bags of white powder. They’d barely shifted any. There were nearly the same number of bags that there had been when Sammy and Tino had first found the stuff a month ago.

Tino had been convinced that whoever had left the stash in the basement of the old youth club where they went to get high would come looking for it. No one just dumps a stash like that. But Sammy had convinced him that it was such a crap hiding place that whoever left it must have cut and run. And in any case, even if the owner didn’t come looking for their gear, Danny was certain grass them up for Paul’s murder in exchange for a shorter sentence. Tino’s mate Louis’s older brother made a deal like that.

“Where’s the money?” Adil asked, breaking into Tino’s paranoia.

“You got it,” Sammy told him.

“No I haven’t,” Adil said, hands on his hips. “I told you to get it.”

“No, you said you was getting it.” Sammy stood up, hitching his jeans up a little and adjusting his baseball cap as he squared up to Adil.

“No I fucking didn’t,” Adil snarled.

Tino froze, his knees painful on the hard floor. This was it. They were completely fucked now. “You left the money behind?” he asked incredulously.

Adil glared down at him. “Sammy left the money behind.”

“No, I fucking didn’t!” Sammy yelled, his arms wheeling emphatically.

“There’s nearly two grand in there,” Tino reminded them. The police would find it. They’d know. Danny would tell them everything.

Adil shot Tino another poisonous look; they were all aware how much money was in the bag. “You’ll have to go back for it,” Adil told Sammy.

“What? Why me?” Sammy whined.

“Because I have a gun and you don’t.” Adil’s hand was poised menacingly on the butt of his gun, protruding just a little from his pocket.

Sammy blinked, looked at it and backed down. “Ok, ok, fine,” he conceded. “But it wasn’t my fault.” He snatched his jacket from where it was hanging over an old shelving unit and shrugged it on as he stomped off across the warehouse.

Adil watched him go, face shifting uncertainly. He looked down at his gun, fingering it lightly, and blew out his cheeks. “I’ll go with him,” he told Tino. “In case there’s trouble.”

He scuffed off after Sammy and the door clanged shut behind him, booming around the warehouse and setting Tino’s heart thudding loudly in his chest. The rain grew heavier.

-*-

Gwen pulled the sleeve of her jacket down over her hand and rubbed a clear patch in the steamed up windscreen. She leant forward and peered out at the old church hall. Still nothing. The drain opposite was blocked with twigs and leaves and a faded old crisp packet and the grey water was bubbling out furiously. One bedraggled, forlorn blackbird was poking hopefully at the grass outside the adjacent church. There were boards nailed across the door and chipboard where once there would have been stained glass. A notice sunk into the soggy ground alongside the porch announced that coming soon would be a stylish development of one and two-bed professional apartments.

Gwen wedged her elbow against the car door, propped her head on her hand and yawned. It had been two hours and six minutes now since Jack left. Solo stake-outs were dull. She’d become so frustrated by her inability to find anything interesting to listen to on the radio that she’d turned it off. Gwen didn’t like silence.

The windscreen had fogged back up again. She idly wiped another patch clear. There was a car pulling up across the street. Aside from an old lady with a shopping basket on wheels and a vinyl headscarf, it was the only movement in the street all morning. It took Gwen a few seconds to realise it was her own car. Ianto stepped out, hurried across the road and got in the passenger side of the SUV, slamming the door behind him.

“Breakfast,” he said, handing Gwen one of the two coffees in his hand and a paper bag. “Thought you’d be hungry.”

“Thanks Ianto.” Gwen’s bad mood began to melt away already. She peeked into the bag at the sticky flaky pastry inside. Maple and pecan. “Ooh, my favourite.”

“Your keys.” Ianto handed them over. “Anything so far?”

“Nope.” She shook her head as she pulled off a chunk of pastry and popped it into her mouth.

They sat in silence, sipping at their coffees and watching the relentless rain. There were times when it eased off to a light drizzle and they thought it might stop, but soon a fresh cascade would come pouring down.

“You can head back to the Hub if you like,” Ianto said when she’d finished her coffee and pastry. “Jack’s going through the list of Danny’s customers, trying to track them down.”

“Sounds like fun,” Gwen said. She stuck her empty cup in the drinks holder and opened the door, wrinkling her nose at the weather. “I’ll see you later then.”

-*-

The alarms sounded as the cog door rolled back and Gwen dripped into the Hub. She squelched up to Jack’s office. He was slumped on his fist staring morosely at his computer screen, doodling idle circles on a spiral bound notebook with his free hand. He looked up at her.

“Still no umbrella huh?”

“No.” Gwen pushed her wet hair back off her face and sat down opposite. “Any luck?”

“Painfully slow process.” Jack leant back in his chair, stretching his arms up taught above his head. Gwen looked away awkwardly. Jack sighed and relaxed, swinging his feet up to rest across the corner of his desk. “You know I’m not good at tasks which require concentration.”

“That is true,” Gwen agreed.

Jack threw the notebook across the desk at her. “So if you wouldn’t mind finishing up? I think I’ve found the first guy.”

He was up and pulling on his coat before Gwen could even reply. She looked down at the notebook. Next to Danny’s childlike handwriting describing his first customer Jack had scrawled in black ink ‘David Camber?’ 

Gwen sighed. “Where are you going?” she asked.

“Ianto managed to get hold of the IO for the Paul Hughes murder,” Jack told her. “They’ve got one suspect — a Tino Martin. I’m gonna go pay him a visit.”

“Shouldn’t you have backup?” Gwen suggested hopefully as she flipped through the long list of names.

“We’re stretched a little thin for that at the moment,” Jack reminded her. He looked down as soon as he’d said it and there was a painful pause as they both remembered why. He looked up again with forced brightness. “Anyway, I’ll be off. Good luck with that.”

Gwen followed him out and stood on the gantry. “How are you getting there?” she called after him.

Jack held up his right hand and swung a car key from his index finger. “Ianto’s car.”

Gwen shook her head as the door rolled shut behind him. She trotted down to her workstation. Her eyes strayed to the photo of Tosh and Owen looking down on her. This time last year, Owen would have been on the stake-out, she’d be going with Jack and Tosh and Ianto would be geeking-out on a search task like this. She blew out her cheeks and set to work on the list. At least she could think about it without crying now.

-*-

Driven inside by the rain, the children of Anderson Towers were wreaking havoc in the hallways and stairwells. The lift was out of order so Jack took the stairs. He brushed past the hostile stares, too old now to be bothered by wary eyes, and even suffered silently the indignity of a globule of spit dropping from an upstairs balcony and landing with a thwack on the shoulder of his coat.

He stepped over a pair of toddlers scrapping on the stone floor and made his way down the walkway to Tino Martin’s flat. The wind was strong up here, whipping the rain into the open hallway. Someone had left up a line of washing that flapped fruitlessly back and forth. Jack rang the doorbell and waited. After a moment, he heard the huffing and puffing of someone hauling themselves through the flat to open the door.

A large black woman in voluminous nightdress opened the door. “Yes?” she enquired suspiciously.

“Hi.” Jack greeted her with a smile. “I’m looking for Tino Martin.”

“He’s not here,” she said with a heavy Jamaican accent and went to shut the door.

Jack put his palm flat against the flimsy door. “I really need to talk to him.”

“I told you, he’s not here,” she snapped. “And when I see him, he’ll have to answer to me first. I’m very cross with him, waking me up in the middle of the night, with that friend of his.”

“What friend?” Jack asked.

“Who are you?” she demanded with a terrifying scowl.

Jack fumbled a fake ID out of his pocket. “Police.”

The scowl deepened. “What’s he done?” she asked. “If he’s been robbing again, I’ll kill him.”

“If you could just give me the name of his friend?” Jack pressed.

She glared at him for a few seconds before apparently deciding that it might be in her interests to give him the name of her son’s delinquent friend. “Adil,” she told him. “Adil Qureshi. He’s bad news. Very bad news. Been leading my boy astray.”

“Thank you.” Jack handed over a business card. “And if Tino turns up, could you call that number?”

She took the card and held it disdainfully between her finger and thumb, eyes narrowed. “You tell me what he’s done first, then maybe I'll call you,” she said.

“I’m afraid I can’t.” Jack was already retreating down the walkway. “Thank you for your time.”

She peered after him as he went but seemed unwilling to come over the threshold. Jack negotiated the squabbling toddlers and a group of children attempting ride a bike down the stairs and touched his earpiece. “Gwen,” he said. “Can you run a check on an Adil Qureshi? I think we’ve got another lead.”

-*-

Ianto leant right forward and rested his chin on the steering wheel, feeling his eyelids drooping. He found he could run on adrenalin and caffeine in this job so long as he was on the move. Sitting in silence watching an abandoned church hall wasn’t quite enough to keep him alert. He rubbed one eye and wriggled in his seat.

He was about to re-tune the radio from a depressing phone-in on abortion when he saw someone approaching the hall. It was a broad-shouldered young man, in baggy jeans and a hoodie, his hood pulled down low over his face. He turned and glanced furtively around as he reached the hall door and Ianto caught a glimpse of the whites of his scared eyes and his jaw working furiously at his gum. Unlocking the padlock on the door, he slipped inside.

Ianto was alert now. He watched as the young man came out again, hurried off down the street, head down, and jumped into a waiting red Fiesta. It pulled away quickly, wheels squealing on the wet tarmac and the exhaust belching out a black cloud of fumes.

Ianto touched his earpiece. “Jack, Gwen — I’ve found one of them.” He turned the key in the ignition and eased the SUV out onto the road. “I’m following him.”

“Ok,” Jack responded. “Be careful.”

“When am I not?” He heard Jack laugh down the line. He crawled up behind the Fiesta which was waiting at the T-junction with its left indicator blinking patiently. “I’ve got a registration number for you Gwen.”

“Go ahead,” Gwen instructed.

“S239 6PG,” Ianto read out. “It’s a red fiesta.”

“Running a check now,” Gwen told them.

“Which way are they headed?” Jack asked.

“Towards the river.” Ianto accelerated through an amber light at a pedestrian crossing. There were two cars between him and the Fiesta now.

“I’m in Splott - I can try to head them off,” Jack told him. “Road names?”

“Copper Street. Turning left onto Clifton Street.” Ianto eased down the narrow street behind them. “There are two of them in the car.”

As Ianto pulled up behind them at the next junction, the driver looked in the rearview mirror. He made eye contact with Ianto. Ianto blinked and stared straight ahead. The driver and passenger were arguing now; he could tell from their gesticulations. They were both checking round behind, staring at him and the SUV. The midday traffic crawled obstinately along the main road in front of them.

“Shit,” Ianto muttered.

“What?” Jack asked.

“They’ve seen me,” Ianto confessed.

The driver spun the car out into the traffic to an accompanying chorus of horns. Ianto took a deep breath and squeezed the SUV out into the smallest of gaps, cutting up a white Ford transit van, the driver of which leant heavily and lengthily on his horn.

“Let them go, Ianto,” Jack instructed.

“Too late.”

The Fiesta screeched round into a side street at the last minute without indicating. Ianto flung the SUV round the corner after them. The kid who’d gone into the hall leant out of the passenger window and fired a wild shot at the SUV. It bounced like a harmless stray pebble off the bulletproof windscreen.

“They’re shooting at me,” Ianto reported.

“Which road?” Jack asked.

“I don’t know,” Ianto replied. “I didn’t catch the name.”

The kid lined up the gun again, his grip betraying his unfamiliarity with firearms. He fired off another shot. There was a loud popping sound and suddenly Ianto found himself spinning. He hauled on the steering wheel and slammed on the brakes. The SUV came to a crunching halt against a parking metre. The Fiesta had disappeared. Ianto slapped his hands onto the steering wheel.

“Ianto!” Jack was yelling in his ear. “Ianto! Are you ok?!”

“Yeah. I’m ok.” Ianto took a deep breath and sighed heavily. “They shot one of the tyres. I lost them.”

“I can try and trace the car from the Hub,” Gwen suggested. “According to the SUV’s tracker, Ianto’s on Richards Terrace.”

“Good plan,” Jack said. “I’ll see you both back at the Hub.”

He broke the connection. The windscreen wipers scraped loudly back and forth. The radio had lost its tuning and was just crackling static. Ianto killed the engine and unbuckled his seatbelt. Stepping out into the rain, he opened the boot and began to unload equipment to uncover the spare tyre. As he heaved it out onto the road and started to hunt for the jack, the rain seemed to intensify yet again. Some birthday.


	7. Chapter 7

Dripping through the cog door into the Hub, Ianto pushed his wet fringe off his forehead and hoped his suit hadn’t lost its shape forever. Gwen’s face popped around the side of her monitor. Ianto glared at her to warn the laugh that was trying to escape to stay trapped behind her tightly pressed lips.

She put a hand to her chest. “Oh Ianto, you poor thing.” Half a giggle snagged the end of her sentence belying her sympathetic words.

Ianto sighed as he came to a despondent stop beside her desk. “I have chafing in unusual places.”

“Is it wet out?” Jack called, emerging from his office, phone in hand, and grinning down at Ianto from the walkway.

Ianto scowled at him. “The SUV needs a spare tyre.” He headed for the stairs down to the bathrooms. “I’ll leave that to you, shall I?”

Jack laughed, immediately dismissing the very notion that Ianto might seriously expect him to carry out a menial administrative task like maintaining their means of transport. “Get yourself changed quick,” he instructed Ianto. “We’ve got a meeting at the Assembly.”

Ianto paused and turned. “With whom?”

“Ralph Dunner,” Jack told him. “Private Secretary to Alistair Hughes.”

Ianto was towelled off and into a dry suit in a few minutes. They left Gwen to her investigations and headed for the Assembly building. In all his time at Torchwood, Ianto had never been inside before. He’d been on a tour of the House of Commons with Lisa once and somehow he imagined the Welsh National Assembly would have a similar feeling of grandeur inside. Instead, it was modern and spacious and he could have been walking down the corridor of any office block in Cardiff.

Ralph Dunner met them in an office at least twice the size of Jack’s and infinitely better lit. Ianto wondered if they’d get to the point of comparing. Ornately-framed oil paintings adorned the walls, in contrast to the multi-functional beige decor. There was a heavy grey overcoat on a stand in the corner with a large, black golfing umbrella propped beneath it. Ralph Dunner himself was an overweight, greying man with ostentatious cufflinks and an old-boy’s tie. His accent was just discernibly Welsh. Ianto was willing to bet that even if Dunner’s office was bigger than Jack’s, considerably less sex had been had in it.

“Captain Harkness,” Dunner greeted Jack with a handshake. He eyed Ianto suspiciously. “Who’s this?”

“Ianto Jones,” Jack introduced him. “My personal assistant.” Ianto raised an eyebrow briefly.

“I wasn’t expecting you to bring anyone,” Dunner replied frostily.

“He goes where I go,” Jack responded firmly. “I’d be lost without him. I’m sure you understand.” Jack wasn’t looking at Ianto whilst he spoke. Not for the first time, Ianto wondered why Jack felt the need to make coded declarations of his affections instead of just coming out and saying it to his face but either way, Jack was likely to be getting himself some very personal assistance for that one later.

“Of course.” Dunner sucked in a disdainful breath through his thin nose and kept his eyes downward. “Maddie’s going to take some minutes,” he continued, gesturing to a young woman with a pencil skirt and a disinterested stare, who sat in the corner, her legs elegantly crossed and a reporter’s notebook balanced on her knee. “If you don’t mind?”

“Not at all,” Jack assured him.

Dunner gestured to two plush seats and sank down behind his desk. Jack and Ianto sat down.

“I’ll get straight to the point,” Dunner said. Maddie’s pen began scratching across the page. “We know Torchwood have been sniffing around Paul Hughes’ murder case. We want to know if there are aliens involved.”

“Would it concern you if there were?” Jack asked, giving nothing away in his expression.

Dunner smiled tightly, steepling his fingers. “Mr Hughes would like to avoid any unnecessary scandal coming out surrounding his son’s death.”

“It’s a bit late for that, isn’t it?” Ianto found himself saying, before he could help it.

Dunner looked at him with a flash of irritation. “He’s rather opinionated for an assistant,” he snapped cattily at Jack.

“I’ll reprimand him for independent thought later,” Jack assured Dunner, still without looking at Ianto. Ianto rolled his eyes.

Dunner glared at them both. “Tell me — does Torchwood have any information about Paul Hughes’ murder?”

“I couldn’t possibly say,” Jack replied.

“You could find yourself in a rather sticky situation if you refuse to cooperate Harkness.” He’d dropped the Captain, then, Ianto noticed.

Jack snorted, his lip curling up in amusement. “The Assembly has no power over Torchwood, and you know it.”

“That may be so,” Dunner countered stonily. “But Mr Hughes has some very powerful friends and Torchwood have made a lot of enemies.”

“That may be so,” Jack threw his words back at him, standing up. Ianto followed suit. “But you’ll have to do more than threaten me to get any information about this case.” He opened the office door. “Have a good afternoon.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” Ianto said with his best subservient smile, before shutting the door on Dunner’s scowl and following Jack down the corridor. He pushed his hands into his pockets and caught up with Jack’s stride. He was so bloody arrogant sometimes. Ianto just wished he didn’t find it such a damn turn-on.

-*-

“Ok, this is Tino Martin,” Jack announced, gesturing to the criminal record up on the screen in the board room. “Couple of minor offences — shoplifting, graffiti, vandalism. Seventeen years old, no previous drug offences, but he was associated with Paul Hughes. I went to his flat earlier; he wasn’t there but I spoke to his mother who mentioned his friend Adil Qureshi.” Jack switched the slide and another young face appeared. “Adil Qureshi. Twenty-one years old. Had an ASBO last year, for drinking in public. Also done a few spells of community service for cannabis dealing and a year in a young offenders’ institute for ABH when he was 13. Also an associate of Paul Hughes and also not at home when I called.”

“And you think they’re linked?” Ianto asked, from his seat to Jack’s right.

“Seems likely doesn’t it?” Jack suggested, sitting down.

“I ran a check on the car that Ianto was following,” Gwen said. “And it’s registered to a Samuel Tobaiwa.”

“Does he have a record?” Jack asked.

“Yep.” Gwen pulled the keyboard towards her and brought up his record. “Similar story really. 17-years-old. Few minor offences.” Gwen looked at the bright eyes and smooth skin of the face on the screen. She’d seen this so many times before, back when she was on the force. “They’re just kids really. Not hardened drugs barons.”

“Well that works in our favour,” Jack mused.

“Why?” Gwen asked.

“They’re more likely to make mistakes.” Ianto finished Jack’s thought.

“Exactly,” Jack agreed. “Have you got an address for this Tobaiwa kid?”

“26 Anderson Towers, Tremorfa,” Gwen read out.

“Three flats down from Tino,” Jack observed. There was a pregnant pause. Gwen knew the Towers; every police officer in Cardiff knew the Towers. Jack moved on. “How did you get on with finding Danny’s customers?” he asked.

Gwen picked up the sheaf of papers by her elbow and waved them. “Pretty sure I’ve got them all. Full names, addresses, numbers, work places.”

“Good work.” Jack stood up. “I’m gonna go pay Tobaiwa a visit. You two start rounding up the drugs.” He held his palm out expectantly to Ianto. “SUV keys?”

“I don’t think so Jack.” Ianto smiled innocently as he stood up. “I think you can walk. Don’t you Gwen?”

“Oh yes,” Gwen agreed. “I think so.”

Ianto tucked his chair neatly under the table, gathered up their empty coffee cups and left the room. Gwen took her papers and followed him, leaving an irked but speechless to Jack to stare helplessly after them.

-*-

“Left at the roundabout,” Ianto instructed, his eyes flicking between Gwen’s papers, his PDA and the SatNav.

“Are you picking up anything?” Gwen asked as she took the exit.

Ianto checked his PDA. “Nope.”

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

“Yep,” Ianto agreed. “It means he might not have taken any yet. Right here.”

Gwen swung into the junction, cutting the corner only a little bit. A functional, minimalist, slightly muffled ringtone broke into their conversation. Ianto shifted and pulled his mobile from his pocket, frowning at the screen. Gwen glanced over, trying to interpret his expression, curious as to who exactly would be phoning Ianto besides herself or Jack. Christ — did Ianto even have any other friends? She’d never asked.

Ianto pulled an apologetic face and answered it. “Hello?” Gwen heard squealing on the other end of the phone. Ianto winced. “Thanks.” He listened for a moment. “Um, not much. I’m at work. Yes, on a Sunday. It’s a, uh, big project we’ve got on.” There was another pause as the other person babbled excitedly. “I don’t really know.” He waited again. “Oh, I got a card through from the postman yesterday,” he told them. “I’ll go to the sorting office tomorrow. But thanks in advance.” He turned his head uncomfortably, staring out of the window, picking at the door sill. “I will, I promise,” Ianto mumbled. “Look, I’ve really got to go, speak soon, yeah? Bye.” He hung up, cutting off the jabbering protest. He pocketed his phone and went back to studying his PDA.

Gwen tried not to pry but she only lasted a few seconds before the question, “Who was that?” burst out.

Ianto looked up at her in surprise. “Oh, um, my sister,” he revealed.

Of all the answers Gwen had been expecting, that hadn’t been on her list. “I didn’t know you had a sister.”

Ianto smiled. “Oh, well, I do.”

He could have said ‘you never asked’, but he didn’t, and his smile told Gwen that he was ok with the fact she had never asked. Besides, in her defence, most normal people would probably have mentioned their siblings at some point during a two year acquaintance. A barrage of questions flooded into Gwen’s head.

“So is she older? Younger?”

“Four years older,” Ianto told her.

Gwen tried to imagine Ianto with an older sister; wondered if he’d been dressed up by her and her friends or if he’d been an irritating scamp winding her up over her first boyfriends. “Do you get on?”

“We’re…” Ianto hesitated. “Not as close as we used to be,” he finished. He pointed at a side road up ahead. “It’s the next right.”

He’d closed down; Gwen recognised the signs now. She was just going to have to live with her curiosity. And she wouldn’t be getting an answer any time soon to her biggest burning question: has she met Jack? She bit her lip, shut up and took the next right.

-*-

Tino turned his music up so loud that it filled his head and left no room for any thoughts about why Adil and Sammy were taking so long to get back with the money. The rhythmic beat of the backing track and the quick-fire stream of rap slowly calmed his nerves. He sat on the steps in the corner of the warehouse playing on his DS, his eyes glued to the screen, every level completed pulling him further away from the reality around him.

The girl made him jump out of his skin. He ripped out his earphones and leapt to his feet. She stared at him without saying a word. He stared back.

“Who the hell are you?” he finally managed to ask.

“Have you got it?” She had a posh accent. Tino noticed that she was shaking, her skinny, bare legs twisting into a knot as she stood. She was wearing denim hot pants and a floaty vest top that exposed the bones of her painfully thin shoulders and arms. Lank hair framed her sunken eyes.

“Got what?”

“The coke,” she said, her voice as dull as her eyes.

Tino suddenly remembered where he’d seen her before. She was Paul’s bird. She’d been at that party a couple of months ago; the first and only time Paul had let his two worlds collide. Tino and Sammy and their mates had stood uncomfortably on Paul’s parents’ manicured lawn in the posh part of town and seen the gulf stretching between them and the kids Paul had gone to school with. Tino shifted uncomfortably under her dead-eyed stare. “Uh…”

“I need it,” she said, gripping the handrail desperately. “I haven’t had anything since Paul died.”

Tino chewed his lip and thought about it. “I’ve got some,” he said carefully. “But you’ll have to pay — it’s good stuff.”

“I haven’t got any money.” Her legs twisted and twisted. “I don't get my allowance for another week.” She blinked slowly. “I can…offer other things.”

Tino looked down at his DS. He thought he knew what the other things were. “What do you mean?”

She stared pointedly at his crotch. Tino’s breathing sped up. His sexual experiences were somewhat limited and mostly under the influence of so much alcohol that he couldn’t really remember them. She stumbled towards him and dropped onto her knees, her hands on his hips. It wouldn’t be wrong, would it? Paul was dead and she was offering. It felt wrong but he didn’t know why and he was already getting hard. She was offering.

He turned off his DS and put it to one side. His chest heaved and his heart stuttered. There was a girl on her knees in front of him. He undid his belt, the buckle clanking loudly in the silence of the warehouse. He pulled his swelling cock out of his pants and she slid her lips around it. Squeezing his eyes shut, he lost himself in the sensation of a hot and moist mouth moving up and down his erection.

He came quickly, his hips jerking and twitching and panting heavily, but she didn’t seem bothered, sucking until he’d finished. She sat back on her haunches and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Thanks,” was all Tino could think of to say.

“Get me the coke,” she demanded, in the same dead voice as before.

Tino winced and felt even more ashamed as he tucked himself away and did up his flies and belt. He shouldn’t have done it. He knew it now the glow of his orgasm was already fading. Coughing, he walked gingerly across the warehouse. He dragged one of the crates out from behind a partition and took out a packet.

She fell on it hungrily, splitting the bag and spilling it onto the step. Tino watched in fascination as she pulled a card out of her back pocket and began to line up the powder on the dirty metal flooring with her trembling hands. She snorted the line in one quick movement, pinched her nose and tilted her head back. A look of relief flooded over her pale features and her limbs finally stopped shaking.

It didn’t last long. Tino’s eyes widened in horror as she jerked and tumbled backwards off the steps onto the warehouse floor. Her body flopped about wildly, like a fish out of water.

“Shit!” Tino dropped to his knees beside her and tried to pin her arms down as she convulsed violently. Her eyes were bulging and all the veins in her skinny neck stuck out as she turned redder and redder. As suddenly as it had begun, it stopped. She lay still on the floor, her eyes glassy and staring. Tino realised he still had hold of her wrists and let go. He didn’t know her name. Tears pricked in the corners of his eyes. “Oh fuck,” he whispered. “Fucking fuck.” The tinny music coming from the headphones dangling from the neck of his t-shirt was beating in time with the rain on the warehouse roof.


	8. Chapter 8

The rain swept in blustery swirls across the empty street and the high branches of the birch trees lining the wide pavements dipped and swayed with each gust. Gwen pulled up at the curb. She and Ianto peered out at the large detached house which had wisteria crawling up the walls and a BMW parked on the curved gravel drive.

They huddled into the alpine-style wooden porch and rang the doorbell, listening to it jangle in the house beyond. The fuzzy figure pf a woman approached the frosted-glass and opened the door. Her face seemed washed-out, as though it had spent a life behind make-up and was unaccustomed to its current unadorned state.

She stared at them. “Yes?”

Gwen put on her friendliest face. “Hello.” She and Ianto flashed fake warrant cards. “We’re from the police. We’re looking for Mike Eden.”

“What?” the woman snapped.

“We’re looking for Mike Eden,” Gwen repeated. “Is he in?”

“Is this some kind of sick joke?” the woman asked.

“I’m sorry?” Gwen queried.

“Mike died on Tuesday,” she told them angrily. “And your lot were round yesterday, asking me about it.”

“I’m so sorry for the confusion Mrs Eden.” Gwen winced at the insensitivity of her mistake and berated herself for the oversight. She winced even more painfully at the question she had to ask next. “Can I ask how Mike died?”

“Shouldn’t you know that?” Mrs Eden snapped.

“Different departments…” Ianto offered lamely.

She sighed heavily. “It was an overdose,” she told them resignedly. “A drug overdose.” She emphasised the word ‘drug’ with disgust. The middle class scandal was almost palpable.

“If you don’t mind Mrs Eden,” Ianto intervened. “We need to search your house.”

“What for?” Mrs Eden asked.

Gwen pulled an apologetic face. “Drugs,” she explained.

Mrs Eden sniffed, offended. “There are no drugs here,” she assured them.

“We just need to make sure,” Gwen told her as sympathetically as she could muster.

Mrs Eden reluctantly stepped back to let them into the spacious tiled hallway. Ianto took the upstairs and Gwen the ground floor. She snapped on a pair of gloves and started in the study. It was the face of respectability; the perfect image of a successful financial adviser with no problems. Mike Eden's framed qualifications and accreditations lined the walls, along with a few pieces of tasteful modern art. Gwen ran her scanner over the neat shelving units, wondering what had driven Michael Eden MBA IMC IFS, with a personal value of £1.2 million in assets plus a sizeable investment portfolio, to start snorting cocaine in his free time.

She was on her knees scanning under the sofa in the living room when Ianto came down the stairs pulling off his gloves. He popped his head around the door. “All clear upstairs,” he told her.

“And down here,” Gwen confirmed, standing up.

“We should go.” Ianto was already heading for the front door.

Gwen pulled off her gloves and stuffed them into her pockets. She stepped hesitantly into the kitchen. Mrs Eden was sitting at the kitchen table, staring out through the conservatory windows at the rain battering the neatly trimmed bushes, her hands around a mug of coffee.

“We’ll be off now,” Gwen said, her voice loud in the silent room.

Mrs Eden looked up, blinking dazedly. “Did you find anything?”

“No,” Gwen informed her. “We didn’t.”

“Oh,” she replied, looking away back at the garden.

She was a rich woman now, Gwen realised; she’d probably never have to worry about money again, if she was sensible. Gwen was aware of Ianto waiting in the hallway. They had a lot of addresses to check and a lot of lives to try and save before they met the same fate as Mike Eden. Gwen tried not to see the slumped shoulders; forced herself to ignore the silence of the empty home.

“Thank you for your time,” she said.

Mrs Eden didn’t reply. Gwen retreated from the room. Ianto already had the front door open. They dashed through the rain and leapt into the SUV. Ianto took out the list and crossed off the first name.

“One down, twenty-three to go,” he announced.

Gwen started the engine and pulled away. She watched the house grow smaller in the rear view mirror and tried not to imagine Mrs Eden inside, sitting alone at the kitchen table. Mrs Eden. Gwen smiled wryly to herself. She’d never even asked her first name.

-*-

Jack paid the driver and stepped out of the taxi, turning up his coat collar against the rain. He’d be claiming that back on expenses and there was no way Ianto could stop him. He might say no to tingly lube but Her Maj could splash out for travel expenses. The taxi roared away, sending up a spray of dirty water that splattered Jack’s boots and soaked the bottom of his trousers. Irritably, he stomped his feet to shake off the worst of the droplets.

Having gone to the Tobaiwa flat at the towers and been disappointed, Jack had been given the tip off by a neighbour about an aunt and uncle that Sammy spent time with. Their house had a long, thin front garden. The front gate was a low rectangle of rusty mesh and squeaked loudly when Jack opened it. Here and there the concrete slabs of the front path had cracked and erupted. When Jack stepped on one, it sunk into the soft earth below with a squelch.

He pushed hard on the plastic doorbell and waited. There was no movement within. He tried again and heard nothing so he knocked loudly on the green door. A few flakes of paint fluttered off with the vibration. Still nothing.

Jack squatted down and pushed his fingers through a surprisingly stiff letterbox. He peered through but could only see a cluttered hallway and beige-carpeted stairs. He stepped off the path into the tall weeds growing in the scruffy lawn and peered through the front window - no lights on; no movement.

He turned around and looked back down at the road. There was no sign of the red Fiesta. There was nothing but a sodden, mangy-looking rabbit in a wire run and a garden full of kids’ bikes. A curtain twitched next door.

Jack pushed his hands in his pockets and retreated back down the garden path, pulling out his mobile to call for another taxi as he started his trudge back towards town.

-*-

Tino had no idea how long he’d been sitting with his head in hands but he was still shaking as much as he had been when the girl had first died. He started violently when the warehouse door grated open. He leapt up and walked over to meet Sammy and Adil.

“We’ve got to stop selling it,” he blurted, the words tumbling out between shallow breaths.

“What you talking about?” Adil asked.

“We’ve got to stop selling it,” Tino pleaded. “It’s dangerous.”

“What’s the matter with you man?” Sammy asked.

Tino stepped aside and pointed to the body that he’d hastily covered in some old plastic sheeting because he felt he ought to do something for her. Adil walked over and poked at the body with his toe.

“What happened?”

“She took some,” Tino explained tearfully. “And then she died.”

“Who the hell is she?”

Sammy crouched down and lifted the sheet, tilting his head to look at her as though trying to make sense of an abstract painting. “Paul’s bird.”

“What was she doing here?” Adil stood with his hands on his hips, glaring at Tino.

“She came for some coke,” he shrugged hopelessly. “So I gave it to her.”

“Alright.” Adil sniffed emotionlessly and looked around. “What did you do with the money?”

Tino froze, his heart pounding again. “She…” He stammered over his words. “She didn’t pay.”

“What the fuck do you mean, she didn’t pay?”

“She didn’t have the money.”

“So you just gave it to her?” Adil queried incredulously.

“No.” Tino lowered his eyes and felt the tears welling again. “She gave me a blow job,” he muttered.

“What the fuck?!” Adil exploded.

“Jesus Christ Tino.” Sammy rolled his eyes.

“I know, alright?!” Spit flew from Tino’s mouth with every tearful word. “I know I was stupid, but she was so desperate and…”

“So were you?” Adil finished angrily. “You’re such a pathetic fucking virgin that you let some bitch suck you off instead of paying you?”

“Is that really what you’re worried about?” Tino wiped his eyes on the shoulders of his t-shirt. “There’s a dead fucking body on the floor!”

“Yeah, well.” Adil threw his hands up in the air. “We’ll have to hide it.”

Tino stared at him. “No way, man.” He shook his head violently, backing away. “We’ve gotta go to the police. This is way over my head.” He pointed shakily to the body. “She’ll have family and shit.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Adil took a step closer, his hand straying to the gun in his waistband. “You're not going to the police — you got that? You grass us all up and you’re going down for murder.”

“But…” Tino felt the panic crawling all over him, squeezing at his throat and tightening around his chest.

Adil jabbed an angry finger in his direction. “Just keep your fucking mouth shut, right?” He beckoned to Sammy who’d been watching the conversation from a wary distance, leant up against the stairs. “Help him hide the body,” Adil barked. He flashed black eyes at Tino. “And you better start thinking about how you can get the money you owe us.”

-*-

“There — on the right,” Ianto directed, and Gwen flicked on the indicator, waiting in the flow of traffic. Every passing car splashed into the deep, black puddle by the bus stop, sending an arc of filthy water up over the pavement.

“How’s it going?” Jack asked loudly in their ears, startling them both.

“One OD so far,” Gwen reported as she nosed through a gap in the traffic and into the side street. “How about you?”

“Mr Tobawaia’s gone AWOL too,” Jack told them. “I’m back at the Hub. Any ideas?”

“They’ll probably have a hideout somewhere,” Ianto suggested, peering out of the window as he tried to make out the numbers on the terraced front doors. “You could try searching for that.”

There was a pause before Jack asked, “How?”

Ianto looked at Gwen and rolled his eyes. “Run a search on abandoned properties in Adamsdown,” he advised. “Go and check them out?”

“You know, that’d be a lot easier if I had a car,” Jack said hopefully.

Ianto tapped urgently on the window and motioned for Gwen to pull in. She eased the SUV between two cars, mounting the pavement on the narrow road.

“Nice try but no,” Ianto told Jack. “We’ve got to make a house call. Good luck.”

He cut Jack off and grinned at Gwen as they unbuckled their seatbelts and got out of the car.

*

It was late afternoon but time didn’t touch the world inside the casino. There were no windows and the place was pulsating with customers; drinking, talking, counting their chips and throwing them down. Music floated from the speakers, slot machines whirred and flashed and gamblers, hardened and casual, huddled around tables.

Sammy led them over to the window to get their chips. He’d seen this all on television and knew how it worked, or so he reckoned. He handed over a wad of notes, with Adil on his shoulder and Tino hovering jumpily behind him. The man exchanged the crumpled notes for a stack of chips with a blank expression. Adil snatched them straight off Sammy.

“Here.” He dolled out a few to Tino. “You can win back what you owe us.”

They split up, heading off into the crowds. Tino stuffed the chips into his pockets and wandered around, loitering at the edges of games and trying to work out the rules that everyone else seemed to know. All the men were in suits or shirts and pointy shoes. All the women were dressed glamorously, with hair dos that spilled and bounced elegantly. Tino knew they were all looking at his trainers and jeans. He shouldn’t be here.

He drifted past Sammy seated at a dice game, throwing his chips around recklessly. He passed Adil at a card game, who shot him a glare that wasn’t hard to interpret. Tino walked quickly on. He found a fairly empty roulette table and lurked a few paces back, watching. He recognised the game from a film he’d seen once.

The croupier spun the wheel and Tino watched mesmerised as it flew round, gradually slowing, the ball clattering to a stop. The two gamblers at the table placed more chips on the edge. Tino found himself stepping closer.

“You playing?” the croupier asked, startling him.

He hesitated and scratched the back of his neck. “Yeah, ok.” He slid onto a seat and pulled the first chip out of his pocket, holding it between his fingers and thumbs and staring at the wheel.

“What are you putting it on?”

“Black,” Tino decided falteringly.

The croupier spun the wheel again. The colours merged into a sickening swirl and Tino closed his eyes against it. His head was pounding. He couldn’t remember the last time he'd slept. He wanted his bed and his Mum’s home cooking. His stomach rumbled loudly as the ball bobbled to land in a red block.

“Red 15,” the croupier announced, sweeping Tino’s chip away from him. “Playing again?”

Tino looked up and saw two men in suits standing in the corner. They hadn’t been there a few moments ago. They were both tall and bald and they were conversing whilst staring at him. Tino swallowed. He shook his head. “No.”

He jumped down and threaded his way back to the window. He cashed in the chips, took his notes and bolted for the door. Adil would kill him later but he wasn’t sticking around to find out what the bald suits wanted. He'd bet they had something to do the suit in the black SUV that had been following them earlier. Out and blinking in the sunlight, he checked over his shoulder. They weren’t following. He nipped through the traffic and ducked into the first shop he came to, losing himself in the late afternoon bargain hunters.

*

Maths had never been Adil’s strong point but he was fairly certain that he’d now lost more than he come in with. On the other hand, he’d won a few games which encouraged him to keep going. He was sure he'd got the hang of it now. A group of lads on a stag do seemed to have taken on the cause of the young first-timer and were coaching him on the rules. A small crowd had gathered around the table. In his head, Adil imagined himself as a novice hustler, wowing the pros with his beginner’s luck.

He lost again and watched the croupier drag his chips away. Sammy appeared at his shoulder.

“How’s it going man?”

Adil shrugged casually. “So-so. You?”

“Shit,” Sammy told him. “I’m quitting whilst I’ve still got some money left. You seen Tino?”

Adil shook his head. “Probably getting fucked over.” He stood up to a chorus of disappointed groans from the stags. Adil grinned at them. “Sorry lads.”

They cashed in their chips and made their way to the door. Adil caught a glimpse of two men in suits lurking in the lobby. He stared at them and they stared right back. Adil looked away quickly.

Outside, they turned to head back towards the docks and their warehouse. Adil checked over his shoulder. The men were following.

“We’re being followed,” he muttered to Sammy.

“What?” Sammy looked round and saw the men. “Shit.”

“Just walk calmly and then we’ll make a run for it when we get to the builder’s yard,” Adil murmured. Sammy nodded in agreement.

They bolted when they reached the gates, weaving in amongst the delivery lorries and jumping over piles of wood, squeezing down the side of the depot. The men had come around the corner and were waiting for them. Adil tried to edge back the way they had come but one of the men was two quick and cut him off. They backed Adil and Sammy into a corner between two stacks of breeze blocks.

“Shit,” Sammy spat but he was squaring up to them, jerking his impressively square shoulders. Adil felt puny beside him. They both looked puny against the two burly men.

“We don’t want to hurt you lads,” one of them said, his accent broad Valleys. “We’ve just got a bit of a warning for you.”

“About what?” Adil wiped his sweaty palms on the back of his jeans.

“Our boss is unhappy about your prices.”

Adil swallowed. “Prices for what?”

They two men smirked at one another. “You’re undercutting him. He’s pretty pissed off.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Adil told them boldly.

They smirked again. “I think you do.”

“So what if we are undercutting him?” Sammy interjected, moving in front of Adil. “What are you going to do about it?”

“He wants to buy you out. Two grand for the whole lot.”

“No way,” Adil declared. “It’s worth way more than that.”

“Your choice,” one the suits shrugged. “You hand it over for two grand, or we take it.”

“You’ll never get it,” Sammy told them, adjusting his cap and setting his hands on his hips.

“Stupid kids.”

One of the men nodded and the other advanced, grabbing Sammy around the throat and hurling him backwards. He landed against the breeze blocks with a thud and a groan. The man began to pummel his face and Adil saw an arc of blood spurt from his lip and splatter the plastic wrapping around the palette of breeze blocks. The man’s boot landed in Sammy’s stomach and he curled in on himself.

The other man launched himself at Adil, who pulled away, leaving him with a light grip on the collar of his jacket. Adil wriggled out of his jacket, squeezed past the man and bolted without looking back. He ran faster than he’d ever run before. His old P.E. teacher would never have believed how fast he was running, as he hurtled through the streets of Cardiff, away from Sammy and away from the builder’s yard.


	9. Chapter 9

The sound of Jack’s head hitting his desk reverberated around the empty Hub. He took a deep breath and bit down on the urge to scream. Another dead end. Running in guns blazing or improvising solutions on the fly was more Jack’s style. Not this endless, tedious searching. He didn’t know how Ianto did it.

He sat up, rubbed his eyes and scrolled to the next property on the list. The Rift monitor hummed contentedly in the background as Jack shifted his numb buttocks on his seat. He located the nearest security camera, hacked in and scanned the area. The address was listed as being under the ownership of a property developer named Morgan, Lloyd and Jones. Jack read the name out loud with a small smile. Could the company be any more Welsh?

He read the names again, adopting a terrible Welsh accent that would have had Gwen and Ianto throwing things at him had they been there. Suddenly, as he rolled the names around on his tongue, they began to sound familiar. Jack frowned and leaned into the screen. He’d seen that logo somewhere before too.

He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, repeating the three names as he focused on the logo, with its looping white letters on a blood red background. The surroundings of the image in his memory gradually came into focus. It had been on the sign outside the old church hall. Jack’s hands flew to the keyboard. A quick internet search revealed the company to have contributed a somewhat generation donation to Alistair Hughes’ party funds.

He refined his search, looking for other properties under development with Morgan, Lloyd & Jones, and scanned the CCTV images for clues until his eyes began to blur. He scrubbed his hands over his face and looked away from the screen, focusing on a point on the other side of the Hub for a few seconds before returning to his search. The next property was a sizeable warehouse on a trading estate down by the docks. Jack leant his chin on one fist and panned around with the camera mounted on the building opposite.

He panned straight past it to begin with, but his mind caught up with his eyes a few seconds later and he sent the camera back again. There it was. The bonnet of a red car poking out around the corner of the building. Jack zoomed in on the number plate and could just about make out the fuzzy registration. He consulted the notes by his left elbow and grinned.

“Gotcha.” He launched himself out of his seat, touching his earpiece as he grabbed his coat and ran for the door. “I’ve found them,” he announced. “They’re in an abandoned warehouse on Frederick Street.”

-*-

Tino sat on the dusty floor between two stacks of crates and stared at the dead screen of his phone. He held the phone in one hand and the battery and SIM card in the other. He’d been distracting himself with a game when it occurred to him that phones could be traced. He’d seen it enough times before in films. They could even trace them when they were off. Well, he was fairly certain they could, anyway, and he wasn’t going to take any chances. He had decided to throw the whole lot into the river as soon as he’d worked up the courage to come out from between the crates.

The door scraped open and Tino tensed, holding his breath. His fist closed so tightly that the corners of the battery began to bite into his palms. He didn’t move. Footsteps and panting breaths approached across the warehouse.

“Tino?” he heard Adil call out quietly.

His breath came out into a loud rush as he gulped in a lungful of air. He pushed himself stiffly to his feet and revealed himself. “Yeah.”

Adil glared at him, red-faced and sweaty. “Where the hell did you go?”

“I…I wasn’t having much luck.”

Adil leant against the steps. “They got Sammy.”

Tino’s eyes went wide. “What?”

“Some guys in suits.” Adil wiped his forehead on the shoulder of his t-shirt. “They beat the shit out of him.”

“Is he alright?”

Adil shrugged. “How the fuck would I know?”

Tino stared at him incredulously. Tino and Sammy had been getting into fights since they could walk but they were mostly petty scuffles that ended with bloody noses or black eyes. There was that time that Sammy had pushed a kid who’d lost his balance and ended up breaking his wrist but that was the worst injury their fights had inflicted. They’d seen kids posturing with flick knives and Tino had even tried that too. But this was different. This was guys in suits and guns and hiding dead bodies. And now Sammy was God knows where, beaten to shit.

“This is too big for me man,” Tino stuttered as he started to back towards the door. “I’m going to the police.”

Adil jumped to attention again, pushing himself away from the railings and advancing on Tino threateningly, his lungs still heaving. “No fucking way.” He stopped and jabbed a finger at Tino.

Tino shook his head. “It’s over Adil.” He felt the panic rising. “Don’t you get it?!” His voice echoed off the old metal walls. “We’re fucked.”

“You're not doing this to me, Tino.”

“Watch me.”

Adil reached for his gun but Tino was too quick. He was out the door before Adil could take aim, his phone and its components clattering to the ground. He didn’t look back. He ran until he couldn’t feel his legs anymore. A drizzle was floating down, caught in the streetlights that were beginning to blink into life. Tino zigzagged crazily down the cracked tarmac of the road through the trading estate.

“Hey! Stop!”

Tino heard the man yelling but he ignored it. He could feel his pace slackening, the blood pounding in his ears and his legs shaking. There wasn’t much adrenalin left in the tank.

“I’m not gonna hurt you!” the man called in an American accent. “I just need to ask you some questions!” He was getting closer and Tino was getting slower.

A hand grabbed at his shoulder and the contact was enough to throw Tino off his stride. He stumbled and didn’t have the energy to fight the gravity pulling at him. He had just enough forethought to put out his hands as he plummeted towards the ground, feeling the tarmac rip through his palms as he sprawled forwards.

A pair of boots stepped into view in front of his face. Tino screwed up his eyes and let his head drop, resting his hot forehead on the cool, wet tarmac. “You've got to arrest me,” he pleaded through his tears. “Please, just arrest me. I don’t want to die.”

-*-

Jack was waiting in the shadows outside an adjacent warehouse when Gwen and Ianto drove up in the SUV. Tino Martin stood beside him, huddled into his jacket and chewing on his thumbnail. Ianto unbuckled his seatbelt and stepped out of the SUV to find the drizzle getting heavier again. He and Gwen closed the doors as quietly as possible. Ianto reached into the holster under his jacket and pulled out his gun, checking and priming it as he walked over to join Jack and Tino. Tino stared at the gun with wide eyes.

“Only one left,” Jack told them in hushed tones. “Adil Qureshi. But he’s got a gun he’s not afraid to use.” Jack took out his Webley and slipped into the military commander mode that Ianto found so comforting. Jack would always know what to do. “There are three entrances. Front door, back door and a fire exit round the side.” He pointed. “I’ll go in through the front. Gwen take the side door, Ianto take the back. Ok?” Gwen and Ianto both nodded to confirm it was. “I’ll go in in five minutes — make my presence known,” he continued. “You two stay hidden unless things turn ugly. And you.” He turned to Tino. “Stay here. Got it?” The kid nodded frantically. Jack looked at Gwen and Ianto. “Let’s go.”

Gwen and Ianto slipped off into the darkness, scurrying across the open space between the warehouses, splitting off to encircle the building. Ianto skirted silently round to the back door. A heavy, rusting chain and weighty padlock were tangled around the handle. Ianto slid a slim metal case out of his pocket. He’d not come up with a name for this particular tool yet but he was working on a pun involving bondage, especially for Jack. The green laser beam cut through the metal in a few seconds and Ianto replaced the tool in its case.

He tugged at the chain and it clanged loudly against the flimsy door as it fell away. Ianto froze, listening with his ear pressed up against the door. There was only silence from within. The door was stiff and snagged on rampant weeds as he cautiously pulled it open.

It was pitch black inside the warehouse. Ianto stepped forward into the darkness and shut the door behind him. He waited, gun ready, as his eyes grew accustomed to the light level. He could make out the shadowy outlines of empty shelving reaching up to the high ceiling and a dim light, at the far end of the warehouse. He moved quietly towards it.

The light was coming from a halogen lamp set on the floor that illuminated Adil’s face in profile. He was squatting on the floor, tipping white powder into a set of scales on the crate in front of him with such concentration that his tongue was poking out from between his teeth. Stopping just beyond the edge of the light, Ianto looked up, past Adil and into the shadows beyond, where he could just about make out Gwen’s shape.

There was crash from the front of the warehouse and Adil leapt to his feet, upsetting the scales and sending white powder cascading to the ground.

“Ok, hands up and step away from the drugs.” Jack’s voice echoed around the warehouse. He walked into view with his Webley aimed at Adil, arm out dead straight in front of him like an arrow.

“What the hell?” Adil cautiously raised his hands. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Torchwood,” Jack told him.

“What’s that?” Adil asked.

“We hunt aliens,” Jack said. “And you may think you’ve got cocaine there, but you haven’t. It’s alien. The highs are out of this world but the side effects are kinda deadly.” Jack gave an ironic smile. “So if you could just hand it over, I’d be very grateful.” Jack motioned with his gun and Adil shuffled reluctantly to one side.

“You’ll have to pay me for it,” Adil demanded.

Jack snorted. “I don’t think so.” He peered down at the stash on the floor.

“There’s, like, a million quid’s worth there.”

Jack lowered his gun and raised an amused eyebrow. “Too bad.”

It was at the moment that Jack relaxed his stance that Ianto saw Adil’s hand go to the waistband of his trousers. “Jack!” Ianto shouted.

Jack looked up as Adil whipped out a Beretta 9mm pistol and fired. The noise bounced painfully around the vast space. Jack clutched at his stomach and sunk to his knees, blood gurgling in his throat and seeping from his mouth. Ianto sprinted past Jack’s slumped body before Gwen even had a chance to react.

Adil shot off into the shadows between the stacked crates with Ianto in hot pursuit, fighting the urge to fire randomly into the darkness. The little shit deserved it but Jack would never forgive him. Ianto skidded round a corner, gaining on Adil as they looped back round towards the light and, Ianto realised, the door.

He was just a few paces from catching him when Tino Martin stepped out from behind a shelving unit and smacked Adil full in the face with a plank of wood. There was a sickening crunch and Adil dropped to the floor. Veering left to avoid tripping over Adil’s prone body, Ianto leant on his knees, panting, and looked up at Tino questioningly.

Tino dropped the plank of wood and it landed with a dull thud. He dusted his hands off on the seat of his jeans and wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. “No more deaths,” he declared shakily.

Ianto nodded in agreement, patted him on the shoulder and crouched down beside Adil. Blood was pouring from his oddly-angled nose but he was still breathing. Ianto plucked the Beretta from his fingers and pocketed it. He dragged Adil’s body across the dusty floor and handcuffed his unconscious arm to a railing.

He strode back to the light. Gwen already had her gloves on and was carefully brushing the spilt powder into a bag. Ianto walked straight past her, knelt down and pulled Jack’s head into his lap. Taking out his handkerchief, he began to gently wipe the blood away from Jack’s chin as he had done too many times before.

Like wind rippling across grass before a storm, Ianto sensed the life returning to Jack’s body before he felt it. Jack gasped loudly as the breath surged through him, grabbing painfully at Ianto’s arms with that familiar wild, terrified expression in his eyes.

“Woah, it’s ok,” Ianto reassured him softly, returning Jack's grip with equal force.

“Oh my fucking god.” Tino was standing a few paces away staring at Jack in horror. “What the fuck?”

Realisation flooded Jack’s expression. “Extensive vocabulary,” he remarked, letting go of Ianto, spitting out a mouthful of blood and sitting up. He growled and shook his head.

Ianto put a hand on his arm. “You ok?”

“Yeah,” Jack nodded. “Shot in the stomach. Never get used to the cramps afterwards.” He put his hand over Ianto’s and squeezed. “Right, clean up time.”

Jack pushed himself to his feet, shaking his head violently again to clear the post-resurrection fog. Ianto knew all the signs now. Ianto stood up and brushed off the knees of his suit.

Tino was still staring, open-mouthed. “He was dead.”

“Just a flesh wound,” Ianto assured him cheerily.

“Is this your whole stash?” Jack asked Tino, indicating the bags of powder that Gwen was starting to load into a crate. Tino nodded, dumbfounded. Jack turned to Ianto. “Adil?”

“Unconscious,” Ianto confirmed. He nodded across the warehouse. “Cuffed to the railings.”

Jack grinned. “Ah, your favourite MO,” he winked and Ianto rolled his eyes.

“If you’ve quite finished flirting,” Gwen interrupted. “I could use a hand here.”

Tino’s eyes flicked between the three of them in bewilderment. “Who the hell are you?”


	10. Chapter 10

It had finally stopped raining. The clouds had parted to reveal a deep blue August backdrop, smudged here and there with streaks of dark grey and lit from below by the pink glow of the city. The Towers were silhouetted in inky black against the night sky, lights blazing from every window. When Gwen pulled up by the curb outside and cut the engine, shouts could be heard echoing through the still air and figures hung in clusters on the open walkways and around the doors.

Tino peered out of the car window and up at the flats. “Am I gonna go to prison?” he asked quietly.

Gwen shook her head. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Like Jack said,” Gwen explained. “We’re not the police. We just wanted the drugs back.”

“Oh.”

“This is yours, I believe,” she said, holding out the bag of cash.

Tino stared at the grubby carrier bag. “I can’t take it,” he said, shaking his head. “The cops’ll trace it back to me.”

“No, they won’t.”

“Yeah, they will,” Tino insisted, still shaking his head. “They always do with dirty money.”

“No, they won’t,” Gwen repeated. “I’ll make sure of it.”

Tino looked across at her and frowned. “Why?”

Gwen dropped the money into his lap. She swept her hair back off her face and looked away, out of the window. “I bet you’re thinking life’s all a bit unfair, aren’t you Tino?” She turned back to face him. “That you had a crap start, so fuck it? Dad walked out when you were a kid, Mam could never hold down a job so you have to live in this shithole, with drugs and knives on every corner; go to a shit school and leave with a couple of crap GCSEs; join a gang ‘cause you want to stay alive. And why bother with college, ‘cause you’re a kid from the Towers and you’re black to boot, so what’s the point of A Levels, right? Because you’ll never amount to much anyway.”

Tino stared at her dumbly for a few seconds. “How do you know all that?”

“Because I’ve seen it so many times before,” she told him, twisting her body in the seat to face him fully. “Kids like you, getting stuck in this life — petty theft, drugs, fights, in and out of prison their whole lives. This is your second chance Tino — make it count.”

Tino looked down at the money in his lap, his fingers clawing gently at the plastic. When he looked back up at Gwen, his eyes were shining in the darkness. He sniffed and scrubbed at his eyes with the cuff of his hoodie.

“Thank you.”

He unbuckled his seatbelt, twisted the handle of the carrier bag tightly around his fist and tugged the door handle open with a soft clunk. The muffled noises of the night were suddenly amplified. A siren wailed past along the adjacent road, its light flickering briefly blue against the wall of the Towers. Tino sighed and pushed the car door open. He stepped out onto the pavement and slammed it shut behind him. Gwen watched as he picked his way across the grass verge, head down as he passed the gaggle of Towers kids hanging around the doors. As he pushed one open, he paused and glanced back at the car. Gwen smiled. Tino blinked, turned and disappeared inside.

-*-

Gwen returned to an empty Hub. Jack and Ianto were obviously still in the process of retconning Adil and setting up a crime scene that would inextricably link him to the murder of Paul Hughes. Gwen turned on her computer and lent back in her seat as it whirred and hummed into life. When she logged into the police server, an alert popped up for a trace she’d set running earlier.

Samuel Tobaiwa’s name flashed at her from the corner of the screen. Gwen double clicked. Sammy had been found in a builder’s yard. He was dead on arrival at hospital from internal bleeding. The paramedics’ report surmised he’d been lying there for several hours before they arrived on the scene. Gwen stared at Sammy’s mugshot on his police file; at the blank eyes in the young face and thought about Tino and his bag of cash. She closed the alert and cancelled the trace.

It took her less than half an hour to wipe Tino’s police record clean. All mentions; all connections; all links to Tino Martin — gone. And if he owed Sammy anything at all, his name would never appear there again.

Jack and Ianto still hadn’t returned by the time she had finished. Gwen tipped her head back and stared up into the vast roof above her. Myfanwy was circling restlessly again. She should probably take one for the team and go up there with the fake egg. Instead, she contemplated the chaos around her desk and decided to tidy up. She shuffled a few bits of paper half-heartedly around her desk.

Amongst the piles of paperwork, she came across a still-sealed envelope and ripped it opened. Sliding the contents out, she discovered their annual medical forms inside. They should have been submitted last month. Gwen slapped a post-it onto the forms and was hunting for a pen when she realised that there was no one to complete the physicals this year. She paused and felt that awful sadness washing over her that struck when she least expected it, if less frequently than it had a few months ago. Sitting back, she stared blankly at the forms. She’d been staring at the date of birth on Ianto’s form for a full five minutes before she realised. Oh. Crap.

-*-

It was gone eleven by the time Jack and Ianto finally dragged themselves through the door of the Hub. As far as they could tell, they’d found all Danny’s customers now — five more ODs and another two kilograms of powder. They were carrying a large crate crammed with the drugs by one handle each and were halfway to the stairs when Gwen popped up from the autopsy bay.

“I need a word with you Jack,” she said, in a quick, urgent tone.

Jack frowned. “Can we catch up once we’ve dumped this stuff downstairs?”

“Uh…” Gwen shifted uneasily. “It’s kind of urgent.”

Ianto shrugged. “I can manage.” Hefting the crate against his chest, he lugged it down into the vaults. He sealed it up ready for incineration the following morning and then checked in on the current guests at Hotel Torchwood — basic accommodation, but you couldn’t argue with the price. Janet snarled irritably at him from behind the glass. Everything was as it should be.

Ianto emerged from the lower levels to find Jack and Gwen with their backs to him, bending over something on Gwen’s desk. They whirled round suspiciously when they heard his footsteps approaching. Ianto raised a quizzical eyebrow but Jack’s expression of panic morphed into a grin as he turned around and presented Ianto with a Bob the Builder birthday cake, one solitary candle flickering in the centre of it.

“Happy birthday,” Jack beamed.

Ianto felt his cheeks flush. “Is it?” he stammered.

“It’s not midnight yet,” Gwen said, tapping her watch and smiling as broadly as Jack was.

“Thank you,” Ianto said.

“It was the only cake they had in Tesco Express,” Gwen explained.

“It’s perfect,” Ianto assured her. “My favourite TV programme actually.” He looked at Jack. “I can’t believe you remembered.”

Jack shifted uncomfortably. “Uh, well, actually, Gwen did.”

“Ah.” Ianto had never expected Jack to remember. They never seemed to notice the passing of the months at Torchwood and Ianto suspected that marking the birthdays of his friends only served as a reminder that they were getting older. Besides, Jack didn’t have a birthday for Ianto to remember. The date on his Torchwood records varied depending on which file you were reading. Ianto knew — he’d read them all.

“But I have got this, from the Torchwood wine cellar.” Jack produced a bottle of champagne from behind a monitor and handed it over.

The Torchwood wine cellar consisted of a random assortment of wines, good and bad, that Jack and other miscellaneous Torchwood employees had acquired through various means over the years. Ianto read the label on the bottle. “Wow. Where did you get this?”

Jack shrugged. “It was a gift. I dated this French heiress for a couple of months — she kept giving me wine and champagne." He pulled a face. "Why — is it bad?”

Ianto shook his head with a small laugh. “No, Jack. It’s good. Very good.”

“We don’t have any glasses,” Gwen called from the kitchenette.

“Seems appropriate.” Ianto twisted and popped the cork, pouring it quickly into the three mugs that Gwen had returned with.

“Twenty five years old,” Jack mused wistfully. “How does it feel?”

“No different to twenty four,” Ianto stated dryly.

Gwen set the mugs down on her desk. “Now you have to blow the candle out,” she instructed.

"As long as you promise not to sing."

"But it’s tradition!” Jack and Gwen protested in unison.

Ianto rolled his eyes, puffed up his cheeks and blew the candle out. Jack and Gwen launched into an enthusiastic, quasi-operatic and highly theatrical rendition of Happy Birthday in two separate keys. Ianto pretended to be embarrassed but really, he’d spent the day dealing with extra-terrestrial cocaine and petty criminals and now he had a Bob the Builder cake and expensive champagne in mugs and to tell the truth, it was one of the best birthdays he’d ever had.


End file.
